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HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 



•Th 




THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 

TORONTO 




Frederiksborg 



See page 182 



HERO TALES 
OF THE FAR NORTH 



BY 



JACOB A. RIIS 



AUTHOR OF "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES 
"THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN*' 
"THE OLD TOWN," ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1910 

All rights reserved 



K* 



^V 






Copyright, 1910, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1910. 



Nortoootj ^reaa 
J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick «fc Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CLA271U 



THIS BOOK OF MY DEAD HEROES 
I DEDICATE TO MY LIVING HERO 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

MAY IT BE MANY YEARS BEFORE THE LAST CHAPTER 

OF HIS SPLENDID WHOLESOME LIFE IS 

WRITTEN IN THE PAGES OF OUR 

country's HISTORY 



FOREWORD 

When a man knocks at Uncle Sam's gate, 
craving admission to his house, we ask him 
how much money he brings, lest he become a 
hindrance instead of a help. If now we were 
to ask what he brings, not only in his pocket, 
but in his mind and in his heart, this stranger, 
what ideals he owns, what company he kept in 
the country he left that shaped his hopes and 
ambitions, — might it not, if the answer were 
right, be a help to a better mutual understand- 
ing between host and guest? For the May- 
flower did not hold all who in this world have 
battled for freedom of home, of hope, and of 
conscience. The struggle is bigger than that. 
Every land has its George Washington, its 
Kosciusko, its William Tell, its Garibaldi, its 
Kossuth, if there is but one that has a Joan 
d' Arc. What we want to know of the man is : 
were its heroes his ? 

This book is an attempt to ask and to an- 
swer that question for my own people, in a 
very small and simple way, it is true, but per- 

vii 



Vlll 



FOREWORD 



haps abler pens with more leisure than mine 
may follow the trail it has blazed. I should 
like to see some Swede write of the heroes of 
his noble, chivalrous people, whom lack of 
space has made me slight here, though I count 
them with my own. I should like to hear the 
epic of United Italy, of proud and freedom- 
loving Hungary, the swan-song of unhappy 
Poland, chanted to young America again and 
again, to help us all understand that we are 
kin in the things that really count, and help 
us pull together as we must if we are to make 
the most of our common country. 

These were my — our — heroes, then. Every 
lad of Northern blood, whose heart is in the 
right place, loves them. And he need make no 
excuses for any of them. Nor has he need of 
bartering them for the great of his new home ; 
they go very well together. It is partly for 
his sake I have set their stories down here. 
All too quickly he lets go his grip on them, 
on the new shore. Let him keep them and 
cherish them with the memories of the mother- 
land. The immigrant America wants and needs 
is he who brings the best of the old home to 
the new, not he who threw it overboard on the 
voyage. In the great melting-pot it will tell 
its story for the good of us all. 



FOREWORD ix 

To those who wonder that I have left the 
Saga era of the North untouched, I would say 
that I have preferred to deal here only with 
downright historic figures. For valuable aid 
rendered in insuring accuracy I am indebted 
to the services of Dr. P. A. Rydberg, Dr. J. 
Emile Blomen, Gustaf V. Lindner, and Pro- 
fessor Joakim Reinhard. My thanks are due 
likewise to many friends, Danes by birth like 
myself, who have helped me with the illustra- 
tions. 

J. A. R. 

Richmond Hill, 
June, 19 10. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Knight Errant of the Sea . . . i 

Hans Egede, the Apostle to Greenland . . 31 

Gustav Vasa, the Father of Sweden . . 61 

Absalon, Warrior Bishop of the North . . 87 

King Valdemar, and the Story of the Danne- 

brog ........ 125 

How the Ghost of the Heath was laid . 153 

King Christian IV . . . . . 179 

Gustav Adolf, the Snow-King .... 205 

King and Sailor, Heroes of Copenhagen . 239 

The Trooper who won a War alone . . 263 

Carl Linne, King of the Flowers . . . 277 

Niels Finsen, the Wolf-Slayer . . . 305 



XI 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Frederiksborg ...... Frontispiece \/ 

FACING PAGE 

" Stay and fight like a man for your King and your 

Flag". . 12- 

Peder Tordenskiold ...... 22^ 

Hans Egede ....... 34 

Teaching the Eskimos to pray . . . 50 > 

" What are ye standing there gaping at ? " . . 70 

Gustav Vasa bidding his People Good-by . . 84 ^ 

Absalon ........ 96 V* 

Fall of Arcona. The Idol Svantevit destroyed . 108 

Ribe, King Valdemar's Capital, in the Middle Ages . 128 

The Coming of the Dannebrog .... 136 

The Heath as it was Fifty Years ago . . 156 v 

Enrico M. Dalgas 170 ' 

The Heath transformed in Twenty-one Years . . 176 \. 

Christian IV . . . . . . 184 

Christian IV at the Battle of Kolberger Heide . . 200 

Gustav Adolf 208 ^ 

xiii 



XIV 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Death of Gustav Adolf at the Battle of Liitzen 
The Siege of Copenhagen, 1658 
The Battle of Copenhagen, April 2, 1801 
Jens Kofoed ..... 

Carl von Linne ..... 
Dr. Niels Finsen ..... 
Patients under the Finsen Light 



FACING PAGE 

. 232 

. 246 l 

. 250 

. 270 ^ 

. 298 

. 324^ 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 

The Eighteenth Century broke upon a 
noisy family quarrel in the north of Europe. 
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, the royal 
hotspur of all history, and Frederik of Den- 
mark had fallen out. Like their people, 
they were first cousins, and therefore all the 
more bent on settling the old question which 
was the better man. After the fashion of 
the lion and the unicorn, they fought "all 
about the town," and, indeed, about every 
town that came in their way, now this and 
now that side having the best of it. On 
the sea, which was the more important 
because neither Swedes nor Danes could 
reach their fighting ground or keep up 
their armaments without command of the 
waterways, the victory rested finally with 
the Danes. And this was due almost 
wholly to one extraordinary figure, the 
like of which is scarce to be found in the 
annals of warfare, PederTordenskjold. Ris- 
ing in ten brief years from the humblest 

3 



4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

place before the mast, a half-grown lad, to 
the rank of admiral, ennobled by his King 
and the idol of two nations, only to be 
assassinated on the "field of honor" at 
thirty, he seems the very incarnation of the 
stormy times of the Eleven Years' War, 
with which his sun rose and set ; for the 
year in which peace was made also saw his 
death. 

Peder Jansen Wessel was born on Oc- 
tober 28, 1690, in the city of Trondhjem, 
Norway, which country in those days was 
united with Denmark under one king. His 
father was an alderman with eighteen 
children. Peder was the tenth of twelve 
wild boys. It is related that the father 
in sheer desperation once let make for 
him a pair of leathern breeches which he 
would not be able to tear. But the lad, 
not to be beaten so easily, sat on a grind- 
stone and had one of his school-fellows 
turn it till the seat was worn thin, a piece 
of bravado that probably cost him dear, 
for doubtless the exasperated father's stick 
found the attenuated spot. 

Since he would have none of the school, 
his father had him apprenticed out to a 
tailor with the injunction not to spare the 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 5 

rod. But sitting cross-legged on a tailor's 
stool did not suit the lad, and he took it out 
of his master by snowballing him thoroughly 
one winter's day. Next a barber under- 
took to teach him his trade ; but Peder ran 
away and was drifting about the streets 
when the King came to Norway. The 
boy saw the splendid uniforms and heard 
the story of the beautiful capital by the 
Oresund, with its palaces and great fighting 
ships. When the King departed, he was 
missing, and for a while there was peace in 
Trondhjem. 

Down in Copenhagen the homeless lad 
was found wandering about by the King's 
chaplain, who, being himself a Norwegian, 
took him home and made him a household 
page. But the boy's wanderings had led 
him to the navy-yard, where he saw mid- 
shipmen of his own size at drill, and he could 
think of nothing else. When he should 
have been waiting at table he was down 
among the ships. For him there was ever 
but one way to any goal, the straight cut, 
and at fifteen he wrote to the King asking 
to be appointed a midshipman. "I am 
wearing away my life as a servant," he wrote. 
"I want to give it, and my blood, to the 



6 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

service of your Majesty, and I will serve you 
with all my might while I live !" 

The navy had need of that kind of re- 
cruits, and the King saw to it that he was 
apprenticed at once. And that was the 
beginning of his strangely romantic career. 

Three years he sailed before the mast 
and learned seamanship, while Charles was 
baiting the Muscovite and the North was 
resting on its arms. Then came Pultava 
and the Swedish King's crushing defeat. 
The storm-centre was transferred to the 
North again, and the war on the sea opened 
with a splendid deed, fit to appeal to any 
ardent young heart. At the battle in the 
Bay of Kjoge, the Dannebrog, commanded 
by Ivar Hvitfeldt, caught fire, and by its 
position exposed the Danish fleet to great 
danger. Hvitfeldt could do one of two 
things : save his own life and his men's by 
letting his ship drift before the wind and by 
his escape risking the rest of the fleet and 
losing the battle, or stay where he was to 
meet certain death. He chose the latter, 
anchored his vessel securely, and fought 
on until the ship was burned down to the 
water's edge and blew up with him and his 
five hundred men. Ivar Hvitfeldt's name 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 7 

is forever immortal in the history of his 
country. A few years ago they raised the 
wreck of the Dannebrog, fitly called after 
the Danish flag, and made of its guns a 
monument that stands on Langelinie, the 
beautiful shore road of Copenhagen. 

Fired by such deeds, young Wessel im- 
plored the King, before he had yet worn 
out his first midshipman's jacket, to give him 
command of a frigate. He compromised 
on a small privateer, the Ormen, but with 
it he did such execution in Swedish waters 
and earned such renown as a dauntless 
sailor and a bold scout whose information 
about the enemy was always first and best, 
that before spring they gave him a frigate 
with eighteen guns and the emphatic warn- 
ing "not to engage any enemy when he was 
not clearly the stronger." He immediately 
brought in a Swedish cruiser, the Alabama 
of those days, that had been the terror of 
the sea. In a naval battle in the Baltic 
soon after, he engaged with his little frigate 
two of the enemy's line-of-battle ships that 
were trying to get away, and only when a 
third came to help them did he retreat, so 
battered that he had to seek port to make 
repairs. Accused of violating his orders, 



8 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

his answer was prompt : "I promised your 
Majesty to do my best, and I did." King 
Frederik IV, himself a young and spirited 
man, made him a captain, jumping him 
over fifty odd older lieutenants, and gave 
him leave to war on the enemy as he saw 
fit. 

The immediate result was that the Gov- 
ernor of Goteborg, the enemy's chief sea- 
port in the North Sea, put a price on his 
head. Captain Wessel heard of it and sent 
word into town that he was outside — to 
come and take him ; but to hurry, for time 
was short. While waiting for a reply, he 
fell in with two Swedish men-of-war having 
in tow a Danish prize. That was not to 
be borne, and though they together mounted 
ninety-four guns to his eighteen, he fell upon 
them like a thunderbolt. They beat him 
off, but he returned for their prize. That 
time they nearly sank him with three broad- 
sides. However, he ran for the Norwegian 
coast and saved his ship. In his report of 
this affair he excuses himself for running 
away with the reflection that allowing him- 
self to be sunk "would not rightly have 
benefited his Majesty's service." 

However, the opportunity came to him 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 9 

swiftly of " rightly benefiting " the King's 
service. After the battle of Kolberger 
Heide, that had gone against the Swedes, 
he found them beaching their ships under 
cover of the night to prevent their falling 
into the hands of the victors. Wessel 
halted them with the threat that every 
man Jack in the fleet should be made to 
walk the plank, saved the ships, and took 
their admiral prisoner to his chief. When 
others slept, Wessel was abroad with his 
swift sailer. If wind and sea went against 
him, he knew how to turn his mishap to 
account. Driven in under the hostile shore 
once, he took the opportunity, as was his 
wont, to get the lay of the land and of the 
enemy. He learned quickly that in the 
harbor of Wesenso, not far away, a Swed- 
ish cutter was lying with a Danish prize. 
She carried eight guns and had a crew of 
thirty-six men ; but though he had at the 
moment only eighteen sailors in his boat, he 
crept up the coast at once, slipped quietly 
in after sundown, and took ship and prize 
with a rush, killing and throwing overboard 
such as resisted. In Sweden mothers hushed 
their crying children with his dreaded 
name ; on the sea they came near to think- 



io HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

ing him a troll, so sudden and unexpected 
were his onsets. But there was no witch- 
craft about it. He sailed swiftly because 
he was a skilled sailor and because he 
missed no opportunity to have the bottom 
of his ship scraped and greased. And when 
on board, pistol and cutlass hung loose ; 
for it was a time of war with a brave and 
relentless foe. 

His reconnoitring expeditions he always 
headed himself, and sometimes he went 
alone. Thus, when getting ready to take 
Marstrand, a fortified seaport of great im- 
portance to Charles, he went ashore dis- 
guised as a fisherman and peddled fish 
through the town, even in the very castle 
itself, where he took notice, along with the 
position of the guns and the strength of the 
garrison, of the fact that the commandant 
had two pretty daughters. He was a sailor, 
sure enough. Once when ashore on such an 
expedition, he was surprised by a company 
of dragoons. His men escaped, but the dra- 
goons cut off his way to the shore. As 
they rode at him, reaching out for his 
sword, he suddenly dashed among them, 
cut one down, and, diving through the 
surf, swam out to the boat, his sword be- 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA u 

tween his teeth. Their bullets churned 
up the sea all about him, but he was not 
hit. He seemed to bear a charmed life ; 
in all his fights he was wounded but once. 
That was in the attack on the strongly 
fortified port of Stromstad, in which he was 
repulsed with a loss of 96 killed and 246 
wounded, while the Swedish loss footed up 
over 1500, a fight which led straight to the 
most astonishing chapter in his whole ca- 
reer, of which more anon. 

All Denmark and Norway presently rang 
with the stories of his exploits. They were 
always of the kind to appeal to the imagina- 
tion, for in truth he was a very knight errant 
of the sea who fought for the love of it 
as well as of the flag, ardent patriot that 
he was. A brave and chivalrous foe he 
loved next to a loyal friend. Cowardice he 
loathed. Once when ordered to follow a 
retreating enemy with his frigate Hvide 
Omen (the White Eagle) of thirty guns, he 
hugged him so close that in the darkness 
he ran his ship into the great Swedish man- 
of-war Osel of sixty-four guns. The chance 
was too good to let pass. Seeing that the 
OseVs lower gun-ports were closed, and 
reasoning from this that she had been 



12 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

struck in the water-line and badly dam- 
aged, he was for boarding her at once, but 
his men refused to follow him. In the 
delay the Osel backed away. Captain Wes- 
sel gave chase, pelted her with shot, and 
called to her captain, whose name was 
Sostjerna (sea-star), to stop. 

"Running away from a frigate, are you ? 
Shame on you, coward and poltroon ! Stay 
and fight like a man for your King and your 
flag!" 

Seeing him edge yet farther away, he 
shouted in utter exasperation, "Your name 
shall be dog-star forever, not sea-star, if 
you don't stay." 

"But all this," he wrote sadly to the 
King, "with much more which was worse, 
had no effect." 

However, on his way back to join the 
fleet he ran across a convoy of ten mer- 
chant vessels, guarded by three of the ene- 
my's line-of-battle ships. He made a feint 
at passing, but, suddenly turning, swooped 
down upon the biggest trader, ran out his 
boats, made fast, and towed it away from 
under the very noses of its protectors. It 
meant prize-money for his men, but their 
captain did not forget their craven conduct 




likeamanjfor" 




A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 13 

of the night, which had made him lose a 
bigger prize, and with the money they got 
a sound flogging. 

The account of the duel between his first 
frigate, LbvendahV s Galley », of eighteen guns, 
and a Swede of twenty-eight guns reads like 
the doings of the old vikings, and indeed 
both commanders were likely descended 
straight from those arch fighters. Wessel 
certainly was. The other captain was an 
English officer, Bactman by name, who 
was on the way to deliver his ship, that had 
been bought in England, to the Swedes. 
They met in the North Sea and fell to fight- 
ing by noon of one day. The afternoon of 
the next saw them at it yet. Twice the 
crew of the Swedish frigate had thrown down 
their arms, refusing to fight any more. 
Vainly the vessel had tried to get away ; the 
Dane hung to it like a leech. In the after- 
noon of the second day Wessel was informed 
that his powder had given out. He had 
a boat sent out with a herald, who pre- 
sented to Captain Bactman his regrets that 
he had to quit for lack of powder, but 
would he come aboard and shake hands ? 

The Briton declined. Meanwhile the 
ships had drifted close enough to speak 



i 4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

through the trumpet, and Captain Wessel 
shouted over from his quarter-deck that 
"if he could lend him a little powder, they 
might still go on." Captain Bactman smil- 
ingly shook his head, and then the two 
drank to one another's health, each on his 
own quarter-deck, and parted friends, while 
their crews manned what was left of the 
yards and cheered each other wildly. 

Wessel's enemies, of whom he had many, 
especially among the nobility, who looked 
upon him as a vulgar upstart, used this 
incident to bring him before a court-martial. 
It was unpatriotic, they declared, and they 
demanded that he be degraded and fined. 
His defence, which with all the records of 
his career are in the Navy Department at 
Copenhagen, was brief but to the point. It 
is summed up in the retort to his accusers 
that "they themselves should be rebuked, 
and severely, for failing to understand that 
an officer in the King's service should be 
promoted instead of censured for doing his 
plain duty," and that there was nothing in 
the articles of war commanding him to treat 
an honorable foe otherwise than with honor. 

It must be admitted that he gave his 
critics no lack of cause. His enterprises 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 15 

were often enough of a hair-raising kind, 
and he had scant patience with censure. 
Thus once, when harassed by an Admiralty 
order purposely issued to annoy him, he 
wrote back : "The biggest fool can see 
that to obey would defeat all my plans. I 
shall not do it. It may suit folk who love 
loafing about shore, but to an honest man 
such talk is disgusting, let alone that the 
thing can't be done." He was at that 
time twenty-six years old, and in charge 
of the whole North Sea fleet. No wonder 
he had enemies. 

However, the King was his friend. He 
made him a nobleman, and gave him the 
name Tordenskjold. It means "thunder 
shield." 

"Then, by the powers," he swore when 
he was told, "I shall thunder in the ears 
of the Swedes so that the King shall hear 
of it !" And he kept his word. 

Charles had determined to take Den- 
mark with one fell blow. He had an army 
assembled in Skaane to cross the sound, 
which was frozen over solid. All was 
ready for the invasion in January 17 16. 
The people throughout Sweden had as- 
sembled in the churches to pray for the sue- 



16 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

cess of the King's arms, and he was there 
himself to lead ; but in the early morning 
hours a strong east wind broke up the ice, 
and the campaign ended before it was begun. 
Charles then turned on Norway, and laid 
siege to the city of Frederikshald, which, 
with its strong fort, Frederiksteen, was the 
key to that country. A Danish fleet lay in 
the Skagerak, blocking his way of reinforce- 
ments by sea. Tordenskjold, with his frig- 
ate, Hvide Omen, and six smaller ships (the 
frigate Vindhunden of sixteen guns, and five 
vessels of light draught, two of which were 
heavily armed), was doing scouting duty 
for the Admiral when he learned that the 
entire Swedish fleet of forty-four ships 
that was intended to aid in the operations 
against Frederikshald lay in the harbor of 
Dynekilen waiting its chance to slip out. 
It was so well shielded there that its com- 
mander sent word to the King to rest easy ; 
nothing could happen to him. He would 
join him presently. 

Tordenskjold saw that if he could capture 
or destroy this fleet Norway was saved ; 
the siege must perforce be abandoned. And 
Norway was his native land, which he loved 
with his whole fervid soul. But no time 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 17 

was to be lost. He could not go back to ask 
for permission, and one may shrewdly guess 
that he did not want to, for it would cer- 
tainly have been refused. He heard that 
the Swedish officers, secure in their strong- 
hold, were to attend a wedding on shore the 
next day. His instructions from the Ad- 
miralty were : in an emergency always to 
hold a council of war, and to abide by its 
decision. At daybreak he ran his ship 
alongside Vindhunden, her companion frig- 
ate, and called to the captain : 

'The Swedish officers are bidden to a 
wedding, and they have forgotten us. What 
do you say — shall we go unasked ?" 

Captain Grip was game. "Good 
enough !" he shouted back. "The wind is 
fair, and we have all day. I am ready." 

That was the council of war and its de- 
cision. Tordenskjold gave the signal to 
clear for action, and sailed in at the head 
of his handful of ships. 

The inlet to the harbor of Dynekilen is 
narrow and crooked, winding between reefs 
and rocky steeps quite two miles, and only 
in spots more than four hundred feet wide. 
Halfway in was a strong battery. Tor- 
denskjold's fleet was received with a tre- 



18 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

mendous fire from all the Swedish ships, 
from the battery, and from an army of 
four thousand soldiers lying along shore. 
The Danish ships made no reply. They 
sailed up grimly silent till they reached a 
place wide enough to let them wear round, 
broadside on. Then their guns spoke. 
Three hours the battle raged before the 
Swedish fire began to slacken. As soon 
as he noticed it, Tordenskjold slipped into 
the inner harbor under cover of the 
heavy pall of smoke, and before the Swedes 
suspected their presence they found his 
ships alongside. Broadside after broadside 
crashed into them, and in terror they fled, 
soldiers and sailors alike. While they ran 
Tordenskjold swooped down upon the half- 
way battery, seized it, and spiked its guns. 
The fight was won. 

But the heaviest part was left — the 
towing out of the captured ships. All the 
afternoon Tordenskjold led the work in 
person, pulling on ropes, cheering on his 
men. The Swedes, returning gamely to 
the fight, showered them with bullets from 
shore. One of the abandoned vessels caught 
fire. Lieutenant Tonder, of Tordenskjold's 
staff, a veteran with a wooden leg, boarded 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 19 

it just as the quartermaster ran up yelling 
that the ship was full of powder and was 
going to blow up. He tried to jump over- 
board, but the lieutenant seized him by 
the collar and, stumping along, made him 
lead the way to the magazine. A fuse had 
been laid to an open keg of powder, and the 
fire was sputtering within an inch of it when 
Lieutenant Tonder plucked it out, smoth- 
ered it between thumb and forefinger, and 
threw it through the nearest port-hole. 
There were two hundred barrels of powder 
in the ship. 

Tordenskjold had kept his word to the 
King. Not as much as a yawl of the Dyne- 
kilen fleet was left to the enemy. He had 
sunk or burned thirteen and captured 
thirty-one ships with his seven, and all the 
piled-up munitions of war were in his hands. 
King Charles gave up the siege, marched 
his army out of Norway, and the country 
was saved. The victory cost Tordenskjold 
but nineteen killed and fifty-seven wounded. 
On his own ship six men were killed and 
twenty wounded. 

Of infinite variety was this sea-fighter. 
After a victory like this, one hears of him 
in the next breath gratifying a passing 



20 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

whim of the King, who wanted to know 
what the Swedish people thought of their 
Government after Charles's long wars that 
are said to have cost their country a mil- 
lion men. Tordenskjold overheard it, had 
himself rowed across to Sweden, picked 
up there a wedding party, bridegroom, min- 
ister, guests, and all, including the captain 
of the shore watch who was among them, 
and returned in time for the palace dinner 
with his catch. King Frederik was enter- 
taining Czar Peter the Great, who had been 
boasting of the unhesitating loyalty of his 
men which his Danish host could not match. 
He now had the tables turned upon him. 
It is recorded that the King sent the party 
back with royal gifts for the bride. One 
would be glad to add that Tordenskjold 
sent back, too, the silver pitcher and the 
parlor clock his men took on their visit. 
But he didn't. They were still in Copen- 
hagen a hundred years later, and may be 
they are yet. It was not like his usual 
gallantry toward the fair sex. But per- 
haps he didn't know anything about it. 

Then we find him, after an unsuccessful 
attack on Goteborg that cost many lives, 
sending in his adjutant to congratulate the 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 21 

Swedish commandant on their " gallant en- 
counter" the day before, and exchanging 
presents with him in token of mutual regard. 
And before one can turn the page he is dis- 
covered swooping down upon Marstrand, 
taking town and fleet anchored there, and 
the castle itself with its whole garrison, all 
with two hundred men, swelled by strata- 
gem into an army of thousands. We are 
told that an officer sent out from the castle 
to parley, issuing forth from a generous 
dinner, beheld the besieging army drawn 
up in street after street, always two hundred 
men around every corner, as he made his 
way through the town, piloted by Tor- 
denskjold himself, who was careful to take 
him the longest way, while the men took 
the short cut to the next block. The man 
returned home with the message that the 
town was full of them and that resistance 
was useless. The ruse smacks of Peder 
Wessel's boyish fight with a much bigger 
fellow who had beaten him once by gripping 
his long hair, and so getting his head in 
chancery. But Peder had taken notice. 
Next time he came to the encounter with 
hair cut short and his whole head smeared 
with soft-soap, and that time he won. 



22 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

The most extraordinary of all his ad- 
ventures befell when, after the attack on 
Stromstad, he was hastening home to Co- 
penhagen. Crossing the Kattegat in a little 
smack that carried but two three-pound 
guns, he was chased and overtaken by a 
Swedish frigate of sixteen guns and a crew 
of sixty men. Tordenskjold had but twenty- 
one, and eight of them were servants and 
non-combatants. They were dreadfully 
frightened, and tradition has it that one of 
them wept when he saw the Swede coming 
on. Her captain called upon him to sur- 
render, but the answer was flung back : 

"I am Tordenskjold ! Come and take 
me, if you can." 

With that came a tiny broadside that 
did brisk execution on the frigate. Tor- 
denskjold had hauled both his guns over 
on the "fighting side" of his vessel. There 
ensued a battle such as Homer would have 
loved to sing. Both sides banged away for 
all they were worth. In the midst of the 
din and smoke Tordenskjold used his musket 
with cool skill ; his servants loaded while he 
fired. At every shot a man fell on the frig- 
ate. 

Word was brought that there was no 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 23 

more round shot. He bade them twist 
up his pewter dinner service and fire that, 
which they did. The Swede tried vainly 
to board. Tordenskjold manoeuvred his 
smack with such skill that they could not 
hook on. Seeing this, Captain Lind, com- 
mander of the frigate, called to him to desist 
from the useless struggle ; he would be 
honored to carry such a prisoner into 
Goteborg. Back came the taunt : 

"Neither you nor any other Swede shall 
ever carry me there!" And with that he 
shot the captain down. 1 

When his men saw him fall, they were 
seized with panic and made off as quickly 
as they could, while Tordenskjold's crew, 
of whom only fourteen were left, beat their 
drums and blew trumpets in frantic defiance. 
Their captain was for following the Swede 
and boarding her, but he couldn't. Sails, 
rigging, and masts were shot to pieces. 
Perhaps the terror of the Swedes was in- 
creased by the sight of Tordenskjold's tame 
bear making faces at them behind his mas- 
ter. It went with him everywhere till that 
day, and came out of the fight unscathed. 

1 He was not mortally wounded, and Tordenskjold 
took him prisoner later at the capture of Marstrand. 



24 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

But during the night the crew ran the ves- 
sel on the Swedish shore, whence Torden- 
skjold himself reached Denmark in an open 
boat which he had to keep bailing all night, 
for the boat was shot full of holes, and 
though he and his companions stuffed their 
spare clothing into them it leaked badly. 
The enemy got the smack, after all, and 
the bear, which, being a Norwegian, proved 
so untractable on Swedish soil that, sad to 
relate, in the end they cut him up and ate 
him. 

King Charles, himself a knightly soul 
and an admirer of a gallant enemy, gave 
orders to have all Tordenskjold's belong- 
ings sent back to him, but he did not live 
to see the order carried out. He was 
found dead in the rifle-pits before Freder- 
iksteen on December n, 171 8, shot through 
the head. It was Tordenskjold himself 
who brought the all-important news to 
King Frederik in the night of December 28, 
— they were not the days of telegraphs and 
fast steamers, — and when the King, who 
had been roused out of bed to receive him, 
could not trust his ears, he said with char- 
acteristic audacity, " I wish it were as true 
that your Majesty had made me a schout- 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 25 

bynacht," — the rank next below admiral. 
And so he took the step next to the last on 
the ladder of his ambition. 

Within seven months he took Mar- 
strand. It is part of the record of that 
astonishing performance that when the un- 
happy Commandant hesitated as the hour 
of evacuation came, not sure that he had 
done right in capitulating, Tordenskjold 
walked up to the fort with a hundred men, 
half his force, banged on the gate, went in 
alone and up to the Commandant's window, 
thundering out : 

" What are you waiting for ? Don't you 
know time is up ?" 

In terror and haste, Colonel Dankwardt 
moved his Hessians out, and Tordenskjold 
marched his handful of men in. When he 
brought the King the keys of Marstrand, 
Frederik made him an admiral. 

It was while blockading the port of 
Goteborg in the last year of the war that 
he met and made a friend of Lord Car- 
teret, the English Ambassador to Den- 
mark, and fell in love with the picture of 
a young Englishwoman, Miss Norris, a 
lady of great beauty and wealth, who, 
Lord Carteret told him, was an ardent 



26 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

admirer of his. It was this love which 
indirectly sent him to his death. Lord 
Carteret had given him a picture of her, and 
as soon as peace was made he started for 
England ; but he never reached that country. 
The remnant of the Swedish fleet lay in 
the roadstead at Goteborg, under the guns 
of the two forts, New and Old Elfsborg. 
While Tordenskjold was away at Mar- 
strand, the enemy sallied forth and snapped 
up seven of the smaller vessels of his block- 
ading fleet. The news made him furious. 
He sent in, demanding them back at once, 
"or I will come after them." He had 
already made one ineffectual attempt to 
take New Elfsborg that cost him dear. In 
Goteborg they knew the strength of his 
fleet and laughed at his threat. But it was 
never safe to laugh at Tordenskjold. The 
first dark night he stole in with ten armed 
boats, seized the shore batteries of the old 
fort, and spiked their guns before a shot 
was fired. The rising moon saw his men 
in possession of the ships lying at anchor. 
With their blue-lined coats turned inside 
out so that they might pass for Swedish 
uniforms, they surprised the watch in the 
guard-house and made them all prisoners. 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 27 

Now that there was no longer reason for 
caution, they raised a racket that woke the 
sleeping town up in a fright. The com- 
mander of the other fort sent out a boat 
to ascertain the cause. It met the Ad- 
miral's and challenged it, "Who goes 
there?" 

"Tordenskjold," was the reply, "come to 
teach you to keep awake." 

It proved impossible to warp the ships 
out. Only one of the seven lost ones 
was recovered ; all the rest were set on 
fire. By the light of the mighty bonfire 
Tordenskjold rowed out with his men, 
hauling the recovered ship right under the 
guns of the forts, the Danish flag flying 
at the bow of his boat. He had not lost 
a single man. A cannon-ball swept away 
all the oars on one side of his boat, but 
no one was hurt. 

At Marstrand they had been up all night 
listening to the cannonading and the crash 
upon crash as the big ships blew up. They 
knew that Tordenskjold was abroad with 
his men. In the morning, when they were 
all in church, he walked in and sat down by 
his chief, the old Admiral Judicher, who 
was a slow-going, cautious man. He whis- 



28 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

pered anxiously, "What news?" but Tor- 
denskjold only shrugged his shoulders with 
unmoved face. It is not likely that either 
the old Admiral or the congregation heard 
much of that sermon, if indeed they heard 
any of it. But when it was over, they saw 
from the walls of the town the Danish ships 
at anchor and heard the story of the last of 
Tordenskj old's exploits. It fitly capped 
the climax of his life. Sweden's entire force 
on the North Sea, with the exception of five 
small galleys, had either been captured, 
sunk, or burned by him. 

The King would not let Tordenskj old go 
when peace was made, but he had his way in 
the end. To his undoing he consented to 
take with him abroad a young scalawag, 
the son of his landlord, who had more money 
than brains. In Hamburg the young man 
fell in with a gambler, a Swedish colonel by 
name of Stahl, who fleeced him of all he had 
and much more besides. When Torden- 
skj old heard of it and met the Colonel in 
another man's house, he caned him soundly 
and threw him out in the street. For this 
he was challenged, but refused to fight a 
gambler. 

" Friends," particularly one Colonel 



A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA 29 

Miinnichhausen, who volunteered to be his 
second, talked him over, and also per- 
suaded him to give up the pistol, with 
which he was an expert. The duel was 
fought at the Village of Gledinge, over the 
line from Hanover, on the morning of 
November 12, 1720. Tordenskjold was 
roused from sleep at five, and, after saying 
his prayers, a duty he never on any ac- 
count omitted, he started for the place 
appointed. His old body-servant vainly 
pleaded with his master to take his stout 
blade instead of the flimsy parade sword 
the Admiral carried. Miinnichhausen ad- 
vised against it ; it would be too heavy, 
he said. Stahl's weapon was a long 
fighting rapier, and to this the treacherous 
second made no objection. Almost at the 
first thrust he ran the Admiral through. 
The seconds held his servant while Stahl 
jumped on his horse and galloped away. 
Tordenskjold breathed out his dauntless 
soul in the arms of his faithful servant 
and friend. 

His body lies in a black marble sarcoph- 
agus in the "Navy Church" at Copen- 
hagen. The Danish and Norwegian peoples 
have never ceased to mourn their idol. 



3o HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

He was a sailor with a sailor's faults. But 
he loved truth, honor, and courage in foe and 
friend alike. Like many seafaring men, he 
was deeply religious, with the unquestioning 
faith of a child. There is a letter in existence 
written by him to his father when the latter 
was on his death-bed that bears witness to 
this. He thanks him with filial affection 
for all his care, and says naively that he 
would rather have his prayers than fall 
heir to twenty thousand daler. His pic- 
tures show a stocky, broad-shouldered youth 
with frank blue eyes, full lips, and an 
eagle nose. His deep, sonorous voice used 
to be heard, in his midshipman days, 
above the whole congregation in the Navy 
Church. In after years it called louder 
still to Denmark's foes. When things were 
at their worst in storm or battle, he was wont 
to shout to his men, " Hi, now we are having 
a fine time !" and his battle-cry has passed 
into the language. By it, in desperate 
straits demanding stout hearts, one may 
know the Dane after his own heart, the real 
Dane, the world over. Among his own 
Tordenskjold is still and always will be 
"the Admiral of Norway's fleet." 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE TO 
GREENLAND 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE TO 
GREENLAND 

When in the fall of 1909 the statement 
was flashed around the world that the North 
Pole had at last been reached, a name long 
unfamiliar ran from mouth to mouth with 
that of the man who claimed to be its dis- 
coverer. Dr. Cook was coming to Copen- 
hagen, the daily despatches read, on the 
Danish Government steamer Hans Egede. 
A shipload of reporters kept an anxious 
lookout from the Skaw for the vessel so sud- 
denly become famous, but few who through 
their telescopes made out the name at last 
upon the prow of the ship gave it another 
thought in the eager welcome to the man it 
brought back from the perils of the Farthest 
North. Yet the name of that vessel stood for 
something of more real account to humanity 
than the attainment of a goal that had 
been the mystery of the ages. No such 
welcome awaited the explorer Hans Egede, 
who a hundred and seventy-two years before 
sailed homeward over that very route, a 
broken, saddened man, and all he brought 
d 33 



34 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

was the ashes of his best-beloved that they 
might rest in her native soil. No gold 
medal was struck for him ; the people did 
not greet him with loud acclaim. The 
King and his court paid scant attention 
to him, and he was allowed to live his last 
days in poverty. Yet a greater honor is 
his than ever fell to a discoverer : the sim- 
ple natives of Greenland long reckoned 
the time from his coming among them. 
To them he was in their ice-bound home 
what Father Damien was to the stricken 
lepers in the South seas, and Dr. Gren- 
fell is to the fishermen of Labrador. 

Hans Poulsen Egede, the apostle of Green- 
land, was a Norwegian of Danish descent. 
He was born in the Northlands, in the 
parish of Trondenas, on January 31, 1686. 
His grandfather and his father before 
him had been clergymen in Denmark, 
the former in the town of West Egede, 
whence the name. Graduated in a single 
year from the University of Copenhagen, 
" at which," his teachers bore witness, 
"no one need wonder who knows the man," 
he became at twenty-two pastor of a parish 
up in the Lofoden Islands, where the 
fabled maelstrom churns. Eleven years he 




Hans Egede 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 35 

preached to the poor fisherfolk on Sunday, 
and on week-days helped his parishioners 
rebuild the old church. When it was finished 
and the bishop came to consecrate it, he 
chided Egede because the altar was too fine ; 
it must have cost more than they could afford. 

" It did not cost anything," was his 
reply. " I made it myself." 

No wonder his fame went far. When 
the church bell of Vaagen called, boats carry- 
ing Sunday-clad fishermen were seen making 
for the island from every point of the com- 
pass. Great crowds flocked to his church ; 
great enough to arouse the jealousy of 
neighboring preachers who were not so 
popular, and they made it so unpleasant 
that his wife at last tired of it. They little 
dreamed that they were industriously paving 
the way for his greater work and for his un- 
dying fame. 

The sea that surges against that rock- 
bound coast ever called its people out in 
quest of adventure. Some who went nine 
hundred years ago found a land in the far 
Northwest barred by great icebergs ; but 
once inside the barrier, they saw deep 
fjords like their own at home, to which 
the mountains sloped down, covered with 



36 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

a wealth of lovely flowers. On green mead- 
ows antlered deer were grazing, the salmon 
leaped in brawling brooks, and birds called 
for their mates in the barrens. Above it all 
towered snow-covered peaks. They saw 
only the summer day ; they did not know 
how brief it was, and how long the winter 
night, and they called the country Green- 
land. They built their homes there, and 
other settlers came. They were hardy men, 
bred in a harsh climate, and they stayed. 
They built churches and had their priests 
and bishops, for Norway was Christian by 
that time. And they prospered after their 
fashion. They even paid Peter's Pence 
to Rome. There is a record that their 
contribution, being in kind, namely, walrus 
teeth, was sold in 1386 by the Pope's 
agent to a merchant in Flanders for twelve 
livres, fourteen sous. They kept up com- 
munication with their kin across the 
seas until the Black Death swept through 
the Old World in the Fourteenth Century ; 
Norway, when it was gone, was like a 
vast tomb. Two-thirds of its people lay 
dead. Those who were left had enough 
to do at home ; and Greenland was for- 
gotten. 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 37 

The seasons passed, and the savages, 
with whom the colonists had carried on a 
running feud, came out of the frozen North 
and overwhelmed them. Dim traditions 
that were whispered among the natives for 
centuries told of that last fight. It was the 
Ragnarok of the Northmen. Not one was 
left to tell the tale. Long years after, 
when fishing vessels landed on that desolate 
coast, they found a strange and hostile 
people in possession. No one had ever 
dared to settle there since. 

This last Egede knew, but little more. 
He believed that there were still settle- 
ments on the inaccessible east coast of 
Greenland where descendants of the old 
Northmen lived, cut off from all the 
world, sunk into ignorance and godlessness, — 
men and women who had once known the 
true light, — and his heart yearned to go 
to their rescue. Waking and dreaming, 
he thought of nothing else. The lamp 
in his quiet study shone out over the sea 
at night when his people were long asleep. 
Their pastor was poring over old manuscripts 
and the logs of whalers that had touched 
upon Greenland. From Bergen he gathered 
the testimony of many sailors. None of them 



38 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

had ever seen traces of, or heard of, the old 
Northmen. 

To his bishop went Egede with his burden. 
Ever it rang in his ears : " God has chosen 
you to bring them back to the light." 
The bishop listened and was interested. 
Yes, that was the land from which sea- 
farers in a former king's time had brought 
home golden sand. There might be more. 
It couldn't be far from Cuba and Hispaniola, 
those golden coasts. If one were to go 
equipped for trading, no doubt a fine stroke 
of business might be done. Thus the 
Right Reverend Bishop Krog of Trondhjem, 
and Egede went home, disheartened. 

At home his friends scouted him, said 
he was going mad to think of giving up 
his living on such a fool's chase. His wife 
implored him to stay, and with a heavy 
heart Egede was about to abandon his pur- 
pose when his jealous neighbor, whose 
parishioners had been going to hear Egede 
preach, stirred up such trouble that his wife 
was glad to go. She even urged him to, 
and he took her at her word. They moved 
to Bergen, and from that port they sailed 
on May 3, 1721, on the ship Haabet (the 
Hope), with another and smaller vessel as 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 39 

convoy, forty-six souls all told, bound for the 
unknown North. The Danish King had 
made Egede missionary to the Greenlanders 
on a salary of three hundred daler a year, 
the same amount which Egede himself 
contributed of his scant store toward the 
equipment. The bishop's plan had pre- 
vailed ; the mission was to be carried by the 
expected commerce, and upon that was to be 
built a permanent colonization. 

Early in June they sighted land, but 
the way to it was barred by impassable 
ice. A whole month they sailed to and 
fro, trying vainly for a passage. At last 
they found an opening and slipped through, 
only to find themselves shut in, with tower- 
ing icebergs closing around them. As they 
looked fearfully out over the rail, their con- 
voy signalled that she had struck, and the 
captain of Haabet cried out that all was 
lost. In the tumult of terror that suc- 
ceeded, Egede alone remained calm. Pray- 
ing for succor where there seemed to be 
none, he remembered the One Hundred 
and Seventh Psalm : " He brought them 
out of darkness and the shadow of death, 
and brake their bands in sunder." And 
the morning dawned clear, the ice was 



4 o HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

moving and their prison widening. On 
July 3, Haabet cleared the last ice- reef, and 
the shore lay open before them. 

The Eskimos came out in their kayaks, 
and the boldest climbed aboard the ship. 
In one boat sat an old man who refused 
the invitation. He paddled about the vessel, 
mumbling darkly in a strange tongue. 
He was an Angekok, one of the native 
medicine-men of whom presently Egede 
was to know much more. As he stood upon 
the deck and looked at these strangers for 
whose salvation he had risked all, his heart 
fell. They were not the stalwart North- 
men he had looked for, and their jargon 
had no homelike sound. But a great wave 
of pity swept over him, and the prayer 
that rose to his lips was for strength to be 
their friend and their guide to the light. 

Not at once did the way open for the 
coveted friendship with the Eskimos. While 
they thought the strangers came only to 
trade they were hospitable enough, but 
when they saw them build, clearly intent 
on staying, they made signs that they had 
better go. They pointed to the sun that 
sank lower toward the horizon every day, 
and shivered as if from extreme cold, and 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 41 

they showed their visitors the icebergs 
and the snow, making them understand that 
it would cover the house by and by. When 
it all availed nothing and the winter came 
on, they retired into their huts and cut 
the acquaintance of the white men. They 
were afraid that they had come to take 
revenge for the harm done their people 
in the olden time. There was nothing 
for it, then, but that Egede must go to 
them, and this he did. 

They seized their spears when they saw 
him coming, but he made signs that he 
was their friend. When he had nothing 
else to give them, he let them cut the 
buttons from his coat. Throughout the 
fifteen years he spent in Greenland Egede 
never wore furs, as did the natives. The 
black robe he thought more seemly for a 
clergyman, to his great discomfort. He 
tells in his diary and in his letters that 
often when he returned from his winter 
travels it could stand alone when he took 
it off, being frozen stiff. After a while he 
got upon neighborly terms with the Eskimos ; 
but, if anything, the discomfort was greater. 
They housed him at night in their huts, 
where the filth and the stench were unen- 



42 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

durable. They showed their special regard 
by first licking off the piece of seal they put 
before him, and if he rejected it they were 
hurt. Their housekeeping, of which he got 
an inside view, was embarrassing in its sim- 
plicity. The dish-washing was done by the 
dogs licking the kettles clean. Often, after a 
night or two in a hut that held half a dozen 
families, he was compelled to change his 
clothes to the skin in an open boat or out on 
the snow. But the alternative was to 
sleep out in a cold that sometimes froze his 
pillow to the bed and the tea-cup to the 
table even in his own home. Above all, 
he must learn their language. 

It proved a difficult task, for the Eskimo 
tongue was both very simple and very 
complex. In all the things pertaining to 
their daily life it was exceedingly complex. 
For instance, to catch one kind of fish 
was expressed by one word, to catch an- 
other kind in quite different terms. They 
had one word for catching a young seal, 
another for catching an old one. When 
it came to matters of moral and spiritual 
import, the language was poor to desper- 
ation. Egede's instruction began when he 
caught the word "kine" — what is it? 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 43 

And from that time on he learned every 
day ; but the pronunciation was as varied 
as the workaday vocabulary, and it was an 
unending task. 

It proceeded with many interruptions 
from the Angekoks, who tried more than 
once to bewitch him, but finally gave it 
up, convinced that he was a great medi- 
cine-man himself, and therefore invulner- 
able. But before that they tried to fo- 
ment a regular mutiny, the colony being 
by that time well under way, and Egede 
had to arrest and punish the leaders. The 
natives naturally clung to them, and when 
Egede had mastered their language and 
tried to make clear that the Angekoks 
deceived them when they pretended to go 
to the other world for advice, they de- 
murred. "Did you ever see them go ? ,: 
he asked. "Well, have you seen this God 
of yours of whom you speak so much?' : 
was their reply. When Egede spoke of 
spiritual gifts, they asked for good health 
and blubber : " Our Angekoks give us that." 
Hell-fire was much in theological evidence 
in those days, but among the Eskimos 
it was a failure as a deterrent. They lis- 
tened to the account of it eagerly and liked 



44 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

the prospect. When at length they became 
convinced that Egede knew more than their 
Angekoks, they came to him with the 
request that he would abolish winter. Very 
likely they thought that one who had such 
knowledge of the hot place ought to have 
influence enough with the keeper of it to 
obtain this favor. 

It was not an easy task, from any point 
of view, to which he had put his hands. 
As that first winter wore away there were 
gloomy days and nights, and they were 
not brightened when, with the return of 
the sun, no ship arrived from Denmark. 
The Dutch traders came, and opened their 
eyes wide when they found Egede and 
his household safe and even on friendly 
terms with the Eskimos. Pelesse — the 
natives called the missionary that, as the 
nearest they could come to the Danish 
prdst (priest) — Pelesse was not there after 
blubber, they told the Dutchmen, but to 
teach them about heaven and of "Him 
up there," who had made them and wanted 
them home with Him again. So he had 
not worked altogether in vain. But the 
brief summer passed, and still no relief 
ship. The crew of Haabet clamored to 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 45 

go home, and Egede had at last to give 
a reluctant promise that if no ship came 
in two weeks, he would break up. His 
wife alone refused to take a hand in pack- 
ing. The ship was coming, she insisted, 
and at the last moment it did come. A 
boat arriving after dark brought the first 
word of it. The people ashore heard voices 
speaking in Danish, and flew to Egede, who 
had gone to bed, with the news. The ship 
brought good cheer. The Government was 
well disposed. Trading and preaching were 
to go on together, as planned. Joyfully- 
then they built a bigger and a better house, 
and called their colony Godthaab (Good 
Hope). 

The work was now fairly under way. 
Of the energy and the hardships it entailed, 
even we in our day that have heard so 
much of Arctic exploration can have but 
a faint conception. Shut in on the coast 
of eternal ice and silence, — silence, save 
when in summer the Arctic rivers were 
alive, and crash after crash announced 
that the glaciers coming down from the 
inland mountains were " casting their 
calves," the great icebergs, upon the ocean, — 
the colonists counted the days from the 



46 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

one when that year's ship was lost to sight 
till the returning spring brought the next 
one, their only communication with their 
far-off home. In summer the days were 
sometimes burning hot, but the nights 
always bitterly cold. In winter, says Egede, 
hot water spilled on the table froze as it ran, 
and the meat they cooked was often frozen 
at the bone when set on the table. Summer 
and winter Egede was on his travels be- 
tween Sundays, sometimes in the trader's 
boat, more often the only white man with 
one or two Eskimo companions, seeking out 
the people. When night surprised him 
with no native hut in sight, he pulled the 
boat on some desert shore and, commend- 
ing his soul to God, slept under it. Once 
he and his son found an empty hut, and 
slept there in the darkness. Not until 
day came again did they know that they 
had made their bed on the frozen bodies of 
dead men who had once been the occupants 
of the house, and had died they never 
knew how. Peril was everywhere. Again 
and again his little craft was wrecked. 
Once the house blew down over their 
heads in one of the dreadful winter storms 
that ravage those high latitudes. Often 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 47 

he had to sit on the rail of his boat and 
let his numbed feet hang into the sea to 
restore feeling in them. On land he some- 
times waded waist-deep in snow, climbed 
mountains and slid down into valleys, 
having but the haziest notion of where he 
would land. At home his brave wife sat 
alone, praying for his safety and listening 
to every sound that might herald his return. 
Tremble and doubt they did, Egede owns, 
but they never flinched. Their work was 
before them, and neither thought of turning 
back. 

The Eskimos soon came to know that 
Egede was their friend. When his boat 
entered a fjord where they were fishing, and 
his rowers shouted out that the good priest 
had come who had news of God, they 
dropped their work and flocked out to 
meet him. Then he spoke to a floating 
congregation, simply as if they were chil- 
dren, and, as with Him whose message he 
bore, " the people heard him gladly." They 
took him to their sick, and asked him 
to breathe upon them, which he did to 
humor them, until he found out that it 
was an Angekok practice, whereupon he 
refused. Once, after he had spoken of 



48 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

the raising of Lazarus from the dead, they 
took him to a new-made grave and asked 
him, too, to bring back their dead. They 
brought him a blind man to be healed. 
Egede looked upon them in sorrowful pity. 
"I can do nothing," he said; "but if he 
believes in Jesus, He has the power and 
can do it." 

" I do believe," shouted the blind man : 
"let Him heal me." It occurred to Egede, 
perhaps as a mere effort at cleanliness, to 
wash his eyes in cognac, and he sent him 
away with words of comfort. He did not 
see his patient again for thirteen years. 
Then he was in a crowd of Eskimos who 
came to Godthaab. The man saw as well 
as Egede. 

"Do you remember?" he said, "you 
washed my eyes with sharp water, and the 
Son of God in whom I believed, He made 



me to see." 



Children the Eskimos were in their 
idolatry, and children they remained as 
Christians. By Egede's prayers they set 
great store. "You ask for us," they told 
him. "God does not hear us ; He does 
not understand Eskimo." Of God they 
spoke as "Him up there." They believed 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 49 

that the souls of the dead went up on the 
rainbow, and, reaching the moon that night, 
rested there in the moon's house, on a 
bench covered with the white skins of young 
polar bears. There they danced and played 
games, and the northern lights were the 
young people playing ball. Afterward they 
lived in houses on the shore of a big lake 
overshadowed by a snow mountain. When 
the waters ran over the edge of the lake, 
it rained on earth. When the "moon was 
dark," it was down on earth catching 
seal for a living. Thunder was caused by 
two old women shaking a dried sealskin 
between them ; the lightning came when 
they turned the white side out. The "Big 
Nail" we have heard of as the Eskimos' 
Pole, was a high-pointed mountain in the 
Farthest North on which the sky rested and 
turned around with the sun, moon, and 
stars. Up there the stars were much bigger. 
Orion's Belt was so near that you had to 
carry a whip to drive him away. 

The women were slaves. An Eskimo 
might have as many wives as he saw fit ; 
they were his, and it was nobody's business. 
But adultery was unknown. The seventh 
commandment in Egede's translation came 



5 o HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

to read, "One wife alone you shall have 
and love." The birth of a girl was greeted 
with wailing. When grown, she was often 
wooed by violence. If she fled from her 
admirer, he cut her feet when he overtook 
her, so that she could run no more. The old 
women were denounced as witches who 
drove the seals away, and were murdered. 
An Eskimo who was going on a reindeer 
hunt, and found his aged mother a burden, 
took her away and laid her in an open 
grave. Returning on the third day, he 
heard her groaning yet, and smothered her 
with a big stone. He tried to justify him- 
self to Egede by saying that "she died 
hard, and it was a pity not to speed her." 
Yet they buried a dog's head with a child, 
so that the dog, being clever, could run 
ahead and guide the little one's steps to 
heaven. 

They could count no further than five ; 
at a stretch they might get to twenty, on 
their fingers and toes, but there they 
stopped. However, they were not with- 
out resources. It was the day of long 
Sunday services, and the Eskimos were 
a restless people. When the sermon dragged, 
they would go up to Egede and make him 




i-.W 



mrn KKf T ^^ ■ **.. ■ ■». 




~\ 



- 



Teaching the Eskimos to pray 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 51 

measure on their arms how much longer 
the talk was going to be. Then they 
tramped back to their seats and sat listening 
with great attention, all the time moving 
one hand down the arm, checking off the 
preacher's progress. If they got to the 
finger-tips before he stopped, they would 
shake their heads sourly and go back for a 
remeasurement. No wonder Egede put his 
chief hope in the children, whom he gathered 
about him in flocks. 

For all that, the natives loved him. 
There came a day that brought this mes- 
sage from the North : "Say to the speaker 
to come to us to live, for the other strangers 
who come here can only talk to us of blubber, 
blubber, blubber, and we also would hear 
of the great Creator." Egede went as far 
as he could, but was compelled by ice and 
storms to turn back after weeks of incredible 
hardships. The disappointment was the 
more severe to him because he had never 
quite given up his hope of finding remnants 
of the ancient Norse settlements. The 
fact that the old records spoke of a West 
Bygd (settlement) and an East Bygd had 
misled many into believing that the deso- 
late east coast had once been colonized. 



52 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Not until our own day was this shown to be 
an error, when Danish explorers searched 
that coast for a hundred miles and found no 
other trace of civilization than a beer bottle 
left behind by the explorer Nordenskjold. 

Egede's hope had been that Greenland 
might be once more colonized by Chris- 
tian people. When the Danish Govern- 
ment, after some years, sent up a handful 
of soldiers, with a major who took the 
title of governor, to give the settlement 
official character as a trading station, they 
sent with them twenty unofficial "Chris- 
tians," ten men out of the penitentiary 
and as many lewd and drunken women 
from the treadmill, who were married by 
lot before setting sail, to give the thing 
a halfway decent look. They were good 
enough for the Eskimos, they seem to 
have thought at Copenhagen. There fol- 
lowed a terrible winter, during which mu- 
tiny and murder were threatened. "It 
is a pity," writes the missionary, "that 
while we sleep secure among the heathen 
savages, with so-called Christian people 
our lives are not safe." As a matter of 
fact they were not, for the soldiers joined 
in the mutiny against Egede as the cause 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 53 

of their having to live in such a place, and 
had not sickness and death smitten the 
malcontents, neither he nor the governor 
would have come safe through the winter. 
On the Eskimos this view of the sup- 
posed fruits of Christian teaching made its 
own impression. After seeing a woman 
scourged on shipboard for misbehavior, they 
came innocently enough to Egede and 
suggested that some of their best Angekoks 
be sent down to Denmark to teach the 
people to be sober and decent. 

There came a breathing spell after ten 
years of labor in what had often enough 
seemed to him the spiritual as well as 
physical ice-barrens of the North, when 
Egede surveyed a prosperous mission, with 
trade established, a hundred and fifty chil- 
dren christened and schooled, and many 
of their elders asking to be baptized. 
In the midst of his rejoicing the summer's 
ship brought word from Denmark that the 
King was dead, and orders from his suc- 
cessor to abandon the station. Egede might 
stay with provisions for one year, if there 
was enough left over after fitting out the 
ship ; but after that he would receive no 
further help. 



54 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

When the Eskimos heard the news, 
they brought their little children to the 
mission. " These will not let you go," 
they said ; and he stayed. His wife, whom 
hardship and privation and the lonely 
waiting for her husband in the long winter 
nights had at last broken down, refused 
to leave him, though she sadly needed the 
care of a physician. A few of the sailors 
were persuaded to stay another year. "So 
now," Egede wrote in his diary when, on 
July 31, 173 1, he had seen the ship sail 
away with all his hopes, "I am left alone 
with my wife and three children, ten sail- 
ors and eight Eskimos, girls and boys 
who have been with us from the start. 
God let me live to see the blessed day that 
brings good news once more from home." 
His prayer was heard. The next summer 
brought word that the mission was to be 
continued, partly because Egede had strained 
every nerve to send home much blubber 
and many skins. But it was as a glimpse 
of the sun from behind dark clouds. His 
greatest trials trod hard upon the good 
news. 

To rouse interest in the mission Egede 
had sent home young Eskimos from time 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 55 

to time. Three of these died of small- 
pox in Denmark. The fourth came home 
and brought the contagion, all unknown, 
to his people. It was the summer fishing 
season, when the natives travel much and 
far, and wherever he went they flocked 
about him to hear of the "Great Lord's 
land," where the houses were so tall that 
one could not shoot an arrow over them, 
and to ask a multitude of questions : 
Was the King very big ? Had he 
caught many whales ? Was he strong and 
a great Angekok ? and much more of the 
same kind. In a week the disease broke 
out among the children at the mission, 
and soon word came from islands and 
fjords where the Eskimos were fishing, 
of death and misery unspeakable. It was 
virgin soil for the plague, and it was terribly 
virulent, striking down young and old in 
every tent and hut. More than two thou- 
sand natives, one-fourth of the whole 
population, died that summer. Of two 
hundred families near the mission only 
thirty were left alive. A cry of terror 
and anguish rose throughout the settle- 
ments. No one knew what to do. In 
vain did Egede implore them to keep their 



56 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

sick apart. In fever delirium they ran out 
in the ice-fields or threw themselves into 
the sea. A wild panic seized the sur- 
vivors, and they fled to the farthest tribes, 
carrying the seeds of death with them 
wherever they went. Whole villages per- 
ished, and their dead lay unburied. Utter 
desolation settled like a pall over the un- 
happy land. 

Through it all a single ray of hope shone. 
The faith that Egede had preached all 
those years, and the life he had lived with 
them, bore their fruit. They had struck 
deeper than he thought. They crowded to 
him, all that could, as their one friend. 
Dying mothers held their suckling babes 
up to him and died content. In a deserted 
island camp a half-grown girl was found 
alone with three little children. Their father 
was dead. When he knew that for him 
and the baby there was no help, he went to a 
cave and, covering himself and the child 
with skins, lay down to die. His parting 
words to his daughter were, "Before you 
have eaten the two seals and the fish I 
have laid away for you, Pelesse will come, 
no doubt, and take you home. For he 
loves you and will take care of you." At the 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 57 

mission every nook and cranny was filled 
with the sick and the dying. Egede and his 
wife nursed them day and night. Child- 
like, when death approached, they tried to 
put on their best clothes, or even to have 
new ones made, that they might please 
God by coming into His presence looking 
fine. When Egede had closed their eyes, 
he carried the dead in his arms to the 
vestibule, where in the morning the men who 
dug the graves found them. At the sight 
of his suffering the scoffers' were dumb. 
What his preaching had not done to win 
them over, his sorrows did. They were 
at last one. 

That dreadful year left Egede a broken 
man. In his dark moments he reproached 
himself with having brought only misery 
to those he had come to help and serve. 
One thorn which one would think he might 
have been spared rankled deep in it all. 
Some missionaries of a dissenting sect — 
Egede was Lutheran — had come with the 
smallpox ship to set up an establishment 
of their own. At their head was a man full 
of misdirected zeal and quite devoid of 
common-sense, who engaged Egede in a 
wordy dispute about justification by faith 



58 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

and condemned him and his work unspar- 
ingly. He had grave doubts whether he 
was in truth a "converted man." It came 
to an end when they themselves fell ill, 
and Egede and his wife had the last word, 
after their own fashion. They nursed the 
warlike brethren through their illness with 
loving ministrations and gave them back 
to life, let us hope, wiser and better men. 

At Christmas, 1735, Egede's faithful wife, 
Gertrude, closed her eyes. She had gone 
out with him from home and kin to a hard 
and heathen land, and she had been his 
loyal helpmeet in all his trials. Now it was 
all over. That winter scurvy laid him upon 
a bed of pain and, lying there, his heart 
turned to the old home. His son had come 
from Copenhagen to help, happily yet 
while his mother lived. To him he would 
give over the work. In Denmark he could 
do more for it than in Greenland, now he 
was alone. On July 29, 1736, he preached 
for the last time to his people and baptized 
a little Eskimo to whom they gave his 
name, Hans. The following week he sailed 
for home, carrying, as all his earthly wealth, 
his beloved dead and his motherless children. 

The Eskimos gathered on the shore and 



HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE 59 

wept as the ship bore their friend away. 
They never saw him again. He lived in 
Denmark eighteen years, training young 
men to teach the Eskimos. They gave him 
the title of bishop, but so little to live on 
that he was forced in his last days to move 
from Copenhagen to a country town, to 
make both ends meet. His grave was for- 
gotten by the generation that came after 
him. No one knows now where it is ; but 
in ice-girt Greenland, where the northern 
lights on wintry nights flash to the natives 
their message from the souls that have gone 
home, his memory will live when that of 
the North Pole seeker whom the world 
applauds is long forgotten. Hans Egede 
was their great man, their hero. He was 
more, — he was their friend. 



GUSTAV VASA, THE FATHER OF 

SWEDEN 



GUSTAV VASA, THE FATHER OF 

SWEDEN 

A great and wise woman had, after ages 
of war and bloodshed, united the crowns 
of the three Scandinavian kingdoms upon 
one head. In the strong city of Kalmar, 
around which the tide of battle had ever 
raged hottest, the union was declared in 
the closing days of the Thirteenth Century. 
Norwegian, Swede, and Dane were thence- 
forth to stand together, to the end of time ; 
so they resolved. It was all a vain dream. 
Queen Margaret was not cold in her grave 
before the kingdoms fell apart. Norway 
clung to Denmark, but Sweden went her 
own way. In the wars of two generations 
the Danish kings won back the Swedish 
crown and lost it, again and again, until in 
1520 King Christian II clutched it for the 
last time, at the head of a conquering army. 
He celebrated his victory with a general 
amnesty, and bade the Swedish nobles to a 
great feast, held at the capital in November. 

63 



64 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Christian is one of the unsolved riddles of 
history. Ablest but unhappiest of all his 
house, he was an instinctive democrat, 
sincerely solicitous for the welfare of the 
plain people, but incredibly cruel and faith- 
less when the dark mood seized him. The 
coronation feast ended with the wholesale 
butchery of the unsuspecting nobles. Hun- 
dreds were beheaded in the public square ; 
for days it was filled with the slain. It is 
small comfort that the wicked priest who 
egged the King on to the dreadful deed was 
himself burned at the stake by the master 
he had betrayed. The Stockholm Mas- 
sacre drowned the Kalmar Union in its 
torrents of blood. Retribution came swiftly. 
Above the peal of the Christmas bells rose 
the clash and clangor of armed hosts pouring 
forth from the mountain fastnesses to avenge 
the foul treachery. They were led by 
Gustav * Eriksson Vasa, a young noble 
upon whose head Christian had set a price. 

The Vasas were among the oldest and 
best of the great Swedish families. It was 
said of them that they ever loved a friend, 

1 The older spelling of this name is followed here in pref- 
erence to the more modern Gustaf. Gustav Vasa himself 
wrote his name so. 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 65 

hated a foe, and never forgot. Gustav 
was born in the castle of Lindholmen, when 
the news that the world had grown suddenly 
big by the discovery of lands beyond the un- 
known seas was still ringing through Europe, 
on May 12, 1496. He was brought up in the 
home of his kinsman, the Swedish patriot 
Sten Sture, and early showed the fruits of 
his training. "See what I will do," he 
boasted in school when he was thirteen, "I 
will go to Dalecarlia, rouse the people, and 
give the Jutes (Danes) a black eye." 
Master Ivar, his Danish teacher, gave him a 
whaling for that. White with anger, the boy 
drove his dirk through the book, nailing it 
to the desk, and stalked out of the room. 
Master Ivar's eyes followed the slim figure 
in the scarlet cloak, and he sighed wearily 
" nobilium nati nolunt aliquid fiati, — the 
children of the great will put up with noth- 
ing." 

Hardly yet of age, he served under the 
banner of Sten Sture against King Christian, 
and was one of six hostages sent to the King 
when he asked an interview of the Swedish 
leader. But Christian stayed away from 
the meeting and carried the hostages off 
to Denmark against his plighted faith. 



66 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

There Gustav was held prisoner a year. 
All that winter rumors of great armaments 
against Sweden filled the land. He heard 
the young bloods from the court prate about 
bending the stiff necks in the country 
across the Sound, and watched them throw 
dice for Swedish castles and Swedish women, 
— part of the loot when his fatherland should 
be laid under the yoke. Ready to burst 
with anger and grief, he sat silent at their 
boasts. In the spring he escaped, dis- 
guised as a cattle-herder, and made his way 
to Liibeck, where he found refuge in the house 
of the wealthy merchant Kort Konig. 

They soon heard in Denmark where he 
was, and the King sent letters demanding 
his surrender ; but the burghers of the 
Hanse town hated Christian with cause, and 
would not give him up. Then came Gus- 
tav's warder who had gone bail for him 
in sixteen hundred gulden, and pleaded for 
his prisoner. 

"I am not a prisoner," was Gustav's 
retort, "I am a hostage, for whom the 
Danish king pledged his oath and faith. 
If any one can prove that I was taken cap- 
tive in a fight or for just cause, let him 
stand forth. Ambushed was I, and be- 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 67 

trayed." The Liibeck men thought of the 
plots King Christian was forever hatching 
against them. Now, if he succeeded in 
getting Sweden under his heel, their turn 
would come next. Better, they said, send 
this Gustav home to his own country, 
perchance he might keep the King busy 
there ; by which they showed their good 
sense. His ex-keeper was packed off* back 
home, and Gustav reached Sweden, sole 
passenger on a little coast-trader, on May 
31, 1520. A stone marks the spot where he 
landed, near Kalmar ; for then struck the 
hour of Sweden's freedom. 

But not yet for many weary months did 
the people hear its summons. Swedish 
manhood was at its lowest ebb. Stock- 
holm was held by the widow of Sten Sture 
with a half-famished garrison. In Kalmar 
another woman, Anna Bjelke, commanded, 
but her men murmured, and the fall of the 
fortress was imminent. When Gustav Vasa, 
who had slipped in unseen, exhorted them 
to stand fast, they would have mobbed him. 
He left as he had come, the day before the 
surrender. Travelling by night, he made his 
way inland, finding everywhere fear and 
distrust. The King had promised that if 



68 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

they would obey him "they should never 
want for herring and salt," so they told 
Gustav, and when he tried to put heart 
into them and rouse their patriotism, they 
took up bows and arrows and bade him 
be gone. Indeed, there were not wanting 
those who shot at him. Like a hunted deer 
he fled from hamlet to hamlet. Such friends 
as he had left advised him to throw him- 
self upon the King's mercy ; told him of 
the amnesty proclaimed. But Gustav's 
thoughts dwelt grimly among the Northern 
mountaineers whom as a boy he had bragged 
he would set against the tyrant. Insensibly 
he shaped his course toward their country. 
He was with his brother-in-law, Joachim 
Brahe, when the King's message bidding 
him to the coronation came. Gustav begged 
him not to go, but Brahe's wife and children 
were within Christian's reach, and he did 
not dare stay away. When he left, the 
fugitive hid in his ancestral home at Rafsnas 
on lake Malar. There one of Brahe's men 
brought him news of the massacre in which 
his master and Gustav's father had per- 
ished. His mother, grandmother, and sis- 
ters were dragged away to perish in Danish 
dungeons. On Gustav's head the King had 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 69 

set a price, and spies were even then on 
his track. 

Gustav's mind was made up. What was 
there now to wait for ? Clad as a peasant, 
he started for Dalecarlia with a single ser- 
vant to keep him company, but before he 
reached the mines the man stole all his 
money and ran away. He had to work 
now to live, and hired out to Anders Persson, 
the farmer of Rankhyttan. He had not 
been there many days when one of the 
women saw an embroidered sleeve stick out 
under his coat and told her master that the 
new hand was not what he pretended to 
be. The farmer called him aside, and Gus- 
tav told him frankly who he was. Anders 
Persson kept his secret, but advised him not 
to stay long in any one place lest his enemies 
get wind of him. He slipped away as soon 
as it was dark, nearly lost his life by breaking 
through the ice, but reached Ornas on the 
other side of Lake Runn, half dead with 
cold and exposure. He knew that another 
Persson who had been with him in the war 
lived there, and found his house. Arendt 
Persson was a rascal. He received him 
kindly, but when he slept harnessed his 
horse and went to Mans Nilsson, a neighbor, 



jo HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

with the news : the King's reward would 
make them both rich, if he would help him 
seize the outlawed man. 

Mans Nilsson held with the Danes, but 
he was no traitor, and he showed the fellow 
the door. He went next to the King's 
sheriff ; he would be bound to help. To 
be sure, he would claim the lion's share of 
the blood-money, but something was better 
than nothing. The sheriff came soon 
enough with a score of armed men. But 
Arendt Persson had not reckoned with his 
honest wife. She guessed his errand and 
let Gustav down from the window to the 
rear gate, where she had a sleigh and team 
in waiting. When the sheriff's posse sur- 
rounded the house, Gustav was well on his 
way to Master Jon, the parson of Svardsjo, 
who was his friend. Tradition has it that 
while Christian was King, the brave little 
woman never dared show her face in the 
house again. 

Master Jon was all right, but news of 
the man-hunt had run through the country, 
and when the parson's housekeeper one day 
saw him hold the wash-bowl for his guest 
she wanted to know why he was so polite to 
a common clod. Master Jon told her that 




< 

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O 

H 
P4 
W 
W 
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O 

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GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 71 

it was none of her business, but that night 
he piloted his friend across the lake to Isala, 
where Sven Elfsson lived, a gamekeeper who 
knew the country and could be trusted. 
The good parson was hardly out of sight on 
his way back when the sheriff's men came 
looking for Gustav. It did not occur to 
them that the yokel who stood warming him- 
self by the stove might be the man they were 
after. But the gamekeeper's wife was quick 
to see his peril. She was baking bread and 
had just put the loaves into the oven with a 
long-handled spade. "Here, you lummox !" 
she cried, and whacked him soundly over the 
back with it, "what are ye standing there 
gaping at ? Did ye never see folks afore ? 
Get back to your work in the barn." And 
Gustav, taking the hint, slunk out of the room. 
For three days after that he lay hidden 
under a fallen tree in the snow and bitter 
cold ; but even there he was not safe, and 
the gamekeeper took him deeper into the 
forest, where a big spruce grew on a hill in 
the middle of a frozen swamp. There no 
one would seek him till he could make a 
shift to get him out of the country. The 
hill is still there ; the people call it the King's 
Hill, and not after King Christian, either. 



72 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

But in those long nights when Gustav Vasa 
listened to the hungry wolves howling in 
the woods and nosing about his retreat, 
it was hardly kingly conceits his mind 
brooded over. His father and kinsmen were 
murdered ; his mother and sister in the piti- 
less grasp of the tyrant who was hunting 
him to his death ; he, the last of his race, 
alone and forsaken by his own. Bitter 
sorrow filled his soul at the plight of his 
country that had fallen so low. But the 
hope of the young years came to the rescue : 
all was not lost yet. And in the morning 
came Sven, the gamekeeper, with a load of 
straw, at the bottom of which he hid him. 
So no one would be the wiser. 

It was well he did it, for half-way to the 
next town some prowling soldiers overtook 
them, and just to make sure that there 
was nothing in the straw, prodded the load 
with their spears. Nothing stirred, and they 
went on their way. But a spear had gashed 
Gustav's leg, and presently blood began to 
drip in the snow. Sven had his wits about 
him. He got down, and cut the fetlock of 
one of the beasts with his jack-knife so that 
it bled and no one need ask questions. 
When they got to Marnas, Gustav was weak 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 73 

from the loss of blood, but a friendly sur- 
geon was found to bind up his wounds. 

Farther and farther north he fled, keeping 
to the deep woods in the day, until he 
reached Rattwik. Feeling safer there, he 
spoke to the people coming from church one 
Sunday and implored them to shake off 
the Danish yoke. But they only shook 
their heads. He was a stranger among 
them, and they would talk it over with their 
neighbors. Not yet were his wanderings 
over. To Mora he went next, where Parson 
Jakob hid him in a lonely farm-house. 
Evil chance led the spies direct to his hiding- 
place, and once more it was the housewife 
whose quick wit saved him. Dame Margit 
was brewing the Yule beer when she saw 
them coming. In a trice she had Gustav 
in the cellar and rolled the brewing vat 
over the trap-door. Then they might search 
as they saw fit ; there was nothing there. 
The first blood was spilled for Gustav Vasa 
while he was at Mora, and it was a Dane 
who did it. He was the kind that liked to 
see fair play ; when an under-sheriff came 
looking for the hunted man there, the Dane 
waylaid and killed him. 

Christmas morning, when Master Jakob 



74 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

had preached his sermon in the church, 
Gustav spoke to the congregation out in the 
snow-covered churchyard. A gravestone 
was his pulpit. Eloquent always, his sor- 
rows and wrongs and the memory of the 
hard months lent wings to his words. His 
speech lives yet in Dalecarlia, for now he 
was among its mountains. 

"It is good to see this great meeting," 
he said, "but when I think of our fatherland 
I am filled with grief. At what peril I am 
here with you, you know who see me 
hounded as a wild beast day by day, hour 
by hour. But our beloved country is more 
to me than life. How long must we be 
thralls, we who were born to freedom ? 
Those of you who are old remember what 
persecution Swedish men and women have 
suffered from the Danish kings. The young 
have heard the story of it and have learned 
from they were little children to hate and 
resist such rule. These tyrants have laid 
waste our land and sucked its marrow, 
until nothing remains for us but empty 
houses and lean fields. Our very lives are 
not safe." He called upon them to rise and 
drive the invaders out. If they wanted a 
leader, he was ready. 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 75 

His words stirred the mountaineers 
deeply. Cries of anger were heard in the 
crowd ; it was not the first time they had 
taken up arms in the cause of freedom. 
But when they talked it over, the older 
heads prevailed ; there had not been time 
enough to hear both sides. They told him 
that they would not desert the King ; he 
must expect nothing of them. 

Broken-hearted and desperate, Gustav 
Vasa turned toward the Norwegian frontier. 
He would leave the country for which there 
was no hope. While the table in the poorest 
home groaned with Yuletide cheer, Sweden's 
coming king hid under an old bridge, outcast 
and starving, till it was safe to leave. Then 
he took up his weary journey alone. The 
winter cold had grown harder as the days 
grew shorter. Famished wolves dogged his 
steps, but he outran them on his snow-shoes. 
By night he slept in some wayside shelter, 
such as they build for travellers in that deso- 
late country, or in the brush. The snow 
grew deeper, and the landscape wilder, as he 
went. For days he had gone without food, 
when he saw the sun set behind the lofty 
range that was to bar him out of home and 
hope forever. Even there was no abiding 



76 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

place for him. What thoughts of his van- 
ished dream, perchance of the distant lands 
across the seas where the tyrant's hand could 
not reach him, were in his mind, who knows, 
as he bent his strength to the last and hard- 
est stage of his journey? He was almost 
there, when he heard shouts behind him 
and turned to sell his life dear. Two men 
on skis were calling to him. They were un- 
armed, and he waited to let them come up. 
Their story was soon told. They had 
come to call him back. After he left, an 
old soldier whom they knew in Mora had 
come from the south and told them worse 
things than even Gustav knew. It was 
all true about the Stockholm murder ; worse, 
the King was having gallows set up in every 
county to hang all those on who said him 
nay ; a heavy tax was laid upon the peas- 
ants, and whoever did not pay was to have a 
hand or foot cut off ; they could still follow 
the plow. And now they had sent away 
the one man who could lead against the 
Danes, with the forests full of outlawed 
men who would have enlisted under him as 
soon as ever the cry was raised ! While 
the men of Dalecarlia were debating the 
news among themselves orders came from 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 77 

the bailiff at Westeras that the tax was to 
be paid forthwith. That night runners were 
sent on the trail of Gustav to tell him to 
come back ; they were ready. 

When he came, it was as if a mighty storm 
swept through the mountains. The people 
rose in a body. Every day whole parishes 
threw off their allegiance to King Christian. 
Sunday after Sunday Gustav spoke to the 
people at their meeting-houses, and they 
raised their spears and swore to follow him 
to death. Two months after the murder in 
Stockholm an army of thousands that 
swelled like an avalanche was marching 
south, and province after province joined in 
the rebellion. King Christian's host met 
them at Brunback in April. One of its 
leaders asked the country folk what kind of 
men the Dalecarlians were, and when he 
was told that they drank water and ate 
bread made of bark, he cried out, " Such 
a people the devil himself couldn't whip ; 
let us get out." But his advice was not 
taken and the Danish army was wiped out. 
Gustav halted long enough to drill his men 
and give them time to temper their arrows 
and spears, then he fell upon Westeras 
and beat the Danes there. The peasant 



78 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

mob scattered too soon to loot the town, 
and the King's men came back with a sud- 
den rush. Only Gustav's valor and pres- 
ence of mind saved the day that had been 
won once from being lost again. 

When it was seen that the Danes were not 
invincible, the whole country rose, took 
the scattered castles, and put their defenders 
to the sword. Gustav bore the rising on 
his shoulders from first to last. He was 
everywhere, ordering and leading. His fiery 
eloquence won over the timorous ; his 
irresistible advance swept every obstacle 
aside. In May he took Upsala ; by mid- 
summer he was besieging Stockholm itself. 
Most of the other cities were in his hands. 
The Hanse towns had found out what this 
Gustav could do at home. They sang his 
praise, but as for backing him with their 
purse, that was another matter. They re- 
fused to lend Gustav two siege-guns when he 
lay before Stockholm, though he offered 
to pledge a castle for each. He had no 
money. Happily his enemy, Christian, was 
even worse off. Neither pledges nor prom- 
ises could get him the money he needed. 
His chief men were fighting among them- 
selves and made peace only to turn upon 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 79 

him. Within a year after the Swedish 
people had chosen Gustav Vasa to be Re- 
gent at the Diet of Vadstena, Christian 
went into exile and, when he tried to get his 
kingdom back, into prison, where he lan- 
guished the rest of his life. He fully 
deserved his fate. Yet he meant well and 
had done some good things in his day. 
Had he been able to rule himself, he might 
have ruled others with better success. 
Schoolboys remember with gratitude that 
he forbade teachers to " spank their pupils 
overmuch and without judgment, as was 
their wont." 

At the Diet of Vadstena the people had 
offered Gustav the crown, but he put it 
from him. Scarce eight months had passed 
since he hid under the bridge, hunted and 
starving. When Stockholm had fallen after 
a siege of two years and all Sweden was 
free, the people met (1523) and made him 
King, whether or no. He still objected, but 
gave in at last and was crowned. 

Popular favor is fickle. Hard times came 
that were not made easier by Gustav's 
determination to fill the royal coffers, and 
the very Dalecarlians who had put him in 
the high seat rose against him and served 



80 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

notice that if things did not mend they 
would have none of him. Gustav made 
sure that they had no backing elsewhere, 
then went up and persuaded them to be 
good by cutting off the heads of their leaders, 
who both happened to be priests : one was 
even a bishop. He had been taught in a 
school that always found an axe ready to 
hand. Let those who lament the savagery 
of modern warfare consider what happened 
then to a Danish fleet that tried to bring 
relief to hard-pressed Stockholm. It was 
beaten in a fight in which six hundred men 
were taken prisoners. They were all, say the 
accounts, " tied hand and foot and flung 
overboard amid the beating of drums and 
blowing of trumpets to drown their cries." 
The clergy fared little better than the laymen 
in that age, but then it was their own fault. 
In plotting and scrapping they were abreast 
of the worst and took the consequences. 

They were the days of the Reformation, 
and Gustav would not have been human 
had he failed to see a way out of his money 
troubles by confiscating church property. 
He had pawned the country's trade to the 
merchants of Liibeck and there was nothing 
else left. Naturally the church opposed 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 81 

him. The King took the bull by the 
horns. He called a meeting and told the 
people that he was sick of it all. He had 
encouraged the Reformation for their good ; 
now, if they did not stand by him, they 
might choose between him and his enemies. 
The oldest priest arose at that and said 
that the church's property was sacred. The 
King asked if the rest of them thought the 
same way. Only one voice was raised, and 
to say yes. 

"Then," said Gustav, "I don't want to 
be your King any more. If it does not 
rain, you blame me ; if the sun does not 
shine, you do the same. It is always so. 
All of you want to be masters. After all 
my trouble and labor for you, you would as 
lief see my head split with an axe, though 
none of you dare lay hold of the handle. 
Give me back what I have spent in your 
service and I will go away and never come 
back." And go he did, to his castle, with 
half a dozen of his nearest friends. 

They sat and looked at one another when 
he was gone, and then priests and nobles 
fell to arguing among themselves, all talking 
at once. The plain people, the burghers 
and the peasants, listened awhile, but when 



82 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

they got no farther, let them know that if 
they couldn't settle it, they, the people, 
would, and in a way that would give them 
little joy. The upshot of it all was that 
messengers were sent to bring the King back. 
He made them go three times, and when he 
came at last, it was as absolute master. In 
the ordering of the kingdom that was made 
there, he became the head of the church as 
well as of the state. Gustav's pen was as 
sharp as his tongue. When Hans Brask, 
the oldest prelate in the land, who had stood 
stoutly by the old regime, left the country 
and refused to come back, he wrote to him : 
" As long as you might milk and shear your 
sheep, you staid by them. When God 
spake and said you were to feed them, not 
to shear and slaughter them, you ran away. 
Every honest man can judge if you have 
done well." Hard words to a good old 
man ; but there were plenty of others who 
deserved them. That was the end of the 
hierarchy in Sweden. 

But not of the unruly peasants who had 
tasted the joys of king-making. How 
kindly they took to the Reformation at the 
outset one can judge from the demand of 
some of them that the King should " burn 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 83 

or otherwise kill such as ate meat on Friday." 
They rose again and again, and would listen 
only to the argument of force. When the 
Lubeckers pressed hard for the payment 
of old debts, and the treasury was empty 
as usual, King Gustav hit upon a new kind 
of revenue. He demanded of every church 
in the land that it give up its biggest bell 
to the funds. It was the last straw. The 
Dalecarlians rose against what they deemed 
sacrilege, under the leadership of Mans 
Nilsson and Anders Persson of Rankhyttan, 
the very men who had befriended Gustav 
in his need, and the insurrection spread. 
The " War of the Bells" was settled with the 
sword, and the peasants gave in. But 
Gustav came of a stock that " never forgot." 
Two years later, when his hands were free 
at home, he suddenly invaded Dalecarlia 
with a powerful army, determined to " pull 
those weeds up by the roots." He sum- 
moned the peasants to Thing, made a ring 
around them of armed men, and gave them 
their choice : 

" Submit now for good and all," he said, 
"or I will spoil the land so that cock shall 
not crow nor hound bark in it again for- 
ever !" 



84 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

The frightened peasants fell on their 
knees and begged for mercy. He made 
them give up their leaders, including his 
former friends, and they were all put to the 
sword. After that there was peace in 
Dalecarlia. 

Gustav Vasa's long reign ended in 1560. 
Like his enemy, Christian II, he was a strange 
mixture of contradictions. He was brave 
in battle, wise in council, pious, if not a 
saint, clean, and merciful when mercy fitted 
into his plans. His enemies called him a 
greedy, suspicious despot. Greedy he was. 
More than eleven thousand farms were con- 
fiscated by the crown during his reign, and he 
left four thousand farms and a great fortune 
to his children as his personal share. But 
historians have called him "the great house- 
keeper" who found waste and loss and left 
an ordered household. He gave all for 
Sweden, and all he had was at her call. 
It was share and share alike, in his view. 
Despotic he could be, too. Uetat c^est moi 
might have been said by him. But he did 
not exploit the state ; he built it. He fash- 
ioned Sweden out of a bunch of quarrel- 
some provincial governments into a heredi- 
tary monarchy, as the best way — indeed, the 



GUSTAV VASA, SWEDEN'S FATHER 85 

only way then — of giving it strength and 
stability. He was suspicious because every- 
body had betrayed him, or had tried to. 
With all that, his steady purpose was to 
raise and enlighten his people and make 
them keep the peace, if he had to adopt the 
Irishman's plan of keeping it himself with 
an axe. He was the father of a line of 
great warriors. Gustav Adolf was his grand- 
son. 

Bent under the burden of years, he bade 
his people good-by at the Diet of Stock- 
holm, a few weeks before his death. His 
old eloquence rings unimpaired in the fare- 
well. He thanked God, who had chosen 
him as His tool to set Sweden free from thrall- 
dom. Almost might he liken himself to 
King David, whom God from a shepherd 
had made the leader of his people. No such 
hope was in his heart when, forty years 
before, he hid in the woods from a blood- 
thirsty enemy. For what he had done 
wrong as king, he asked the people's pardon ; 
it was not done on purpose. He knew well 
that many thought him a hard ruler, but the 
time would come when they would gladly 
dig him up from his grave if they only could. 
And with that he went out, bowing deeply 



86 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

to the Diet, the tears streaming down his 
face. 

They saw him no more ; but on his tomb 
the Swedish people, forgetting all else, have 
written that he was the "Father of his 
Country." 



ABSALON, WARRIOR BISHOP , OF 
THE NORTH 



ABSALON, WARRIOR BISHOP OF 
THE NORTH 

A welcome change awaits the traveller 
who, having shaken off the chill of the 
German Dreadnaughts at Kiel, crosses the 
Baltic to the Danish Islands — a change 
from the dread portents of war to smiling 
peace. There can be nothing more pastoral 
and restful than the Seeland landscape as 
framed in a car window ; yet he misses its 
chief charm whom its folk-lore escapes — 
the countless legends that cling to field and 
forest from days long gone. The guide-book 
gives scarce a hint of them ; but turn from 
its page and they meet you at every step, 
hail you from every homestead, every copse. 
Nor is their story always of peace. Here 
was Knud Lavard slain by his envious kins- 
man for the crown, and a miraculous spring 
gushed forth where he fell. Of the church 
they built for the pilgrims who sought it 
from afar they will show you the site, but 
the spring dried up with the simple old 

8 9 



90 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

faith. Yonder, under the roof of Ringsted 
church, lie Denmark's greatest dead. Not 
half an hour from the ferry landing at 
Korsor, your train labors past a hill crowned 
by a venerable cross, Holy Anders' Hill. 
So saintly was that masterful priest that 
he was wont, when he prayed, to hang his 
hat and gloves on a sunbeam as on a hook. 
And woe to the land if his cross be dis- 
turbed, for then, the peasant will tell you, 
the cattle die of plague and the crops fail. 
A little further on, just beyond Soro, a vil- 
lage church rears twin towers above the 
wheat-field where the skylark soars and 
sings to its nesting mate. For seven hun- 
dred years the story of that church and its 
builder has been told at Danish firesides, 
and the time will never come when it is 
forgotten. 

Fjenneslev is the name of the village, and 
Asker Ryg * ruled there in the Twelfth Cen- 
tury, when the king summoned his men to 
the war. Bidding good-by to his wife, 
Sir Asker tells her to build a new church 
while he is away, for the old, "with wall of 
clay, straw-thatched and grim," is in ruins. 
And let it be worthy of the Master : 

1 Pronounce Reeg. 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 91 

"The roof let make of tiling red ; 
Of stone thou build the wall ;" 

and then he whispers in her ear : 

"Hear thou, my Lady Inge, 

Of women thou art the flower ; 
An' thou bearest to me a son so bold, 
Set on the church a tower." 

Should the child be a girl, he tells her to 
build only a spire, for "modesty beseemeth 
a woman." Well for Sir Asker that he did 
not live in our day of clamoring suffragists. 
He would have "views" without doubt. 
But no such things troubled him while he 
battled in foreign lands all summer. It 
was autumn when he returned and saw from 
afar the swell behind which lay Fjenneslev 
and home. Impatiently he spurred his 
horse to the brow of the hill, for no news had 
come of Lady Inge those many months. 
The bard tells us what he saw there : 

"It was the good Sir Asker Ryg ; 
Right merrily laughed he, 
When from that green and swelling hill 
Two towers did he see." 

Two sons lay at the Lady Inge's breast, and 
all was well. 



92 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

"The first one of the brothers two 
They called him Esbern Snare. 1 
He grew as strong as a savage bear 
And fleeter than any hare. 

"The second him called they Absalon, 
A bishop he at home. 
He used his trusty Danish sword 
As the Pope his staff at Rome." 

Absalon and Esbern were not twins, as 
tradition has it. They were better than 
that. They became the great heroes of 
their day, and the years have not dimmed 
their renown. And Absalon reached far 
beyond the boundaries of little Denmark 
to every people that speaks the English 
tongue. For it was he who, as archbishop 
of the North, "strictly and earnestly" 
charged his friend and clerk Saxo to gather 
the Danish chronicles while yet it was time, 
because, says Saxo, in the preface of his 
monumental work, "he could no longer 
abide that his fatherland, which he always 
honored and magnified with especial zeal, 
should be without a record of the great 
deeds of the fathers." And from the record 
Saxo wrote we have our Hamlet. 

1 Pronounce Snare, with a as in are. In the Danish hare 
rhymes with snare, so pronounced. 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 93 

It was when they had grown great and 
famous that Sir Asker and his wife built the 
church in thanksgiving for their boys, not 
when they were born, and the way that came 
to light was good and wholesome. They 
were about to rebuild the church, on which 
there had been no towers at all since they 
crumbled in the middle ages, and had 
decided to put on only one ; for the sour 
critics, who are never content in writing 
a people's history unless they can divest it 
of all its flesh and make it sit in its bones, 
as it were, sneered at the tradition and 
called it an old woman's tale. But they 
did not shout quite so loud when, in peeling 
off the whitewash of the Reformation, the 
mason's hammer brought forth mural paint- 
ings that grew and grew until there stood 
the whole story to read on the wall, with Sir 
Asker himself and the Lady Inge, clad in 
garments of the Twelfth Century, bringing 
to the Virgin the church with the twin 
towers. So the folk-lore was not so far out 
after all, and the church was rebuilt with 
two towers, as it should be. 

Under its eaves, whether of straw or tile, 
the two boys played their childish games, 
and before long there came to join in them 



94 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

another of their own age, young Valdemar, 
whose father, the very Knud Lavard men- 
tioned above, had been foully murdered a 
while before. It was a time, says Saxo, 
in which " he must be of stout heart and 
strong head who dared aspire to Denmark's 
crown. For in less than a hundred years 
more than sixteen of her kings and their kin 
were either slain without cause by their 
own subjects, or otherwise met a sudden 
death." Sir Asker and the murdered Knud 
had been foster brothers, and throughout 
the bloody years that followed, he and his 
brothers, sons of the powerful Skjalm Hvide, 1 
espoused his cause in good and evil days, 
while they saw to it that no harm came to 
the young prince under their roof. 

The three boys, as they grew up, were 
bred to the stern duties of fighting men, 
as was the custom of their class. Absalon, 
indeed, was destined for the church ; but 
in a country so recently won from the old 
war gods, it was the church militant yet, 
and he wielded spear and sword with the 
best of them. When, at eighteen, they 
sent him to France to be taught, he did not 
for his theological studies neglect the in- 

1 Pronounced Veethe. 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 95 

struction of his boyhood. There he became 
the disciple and friend of the Abbot Bernard 
of Clairvaux, more powerful then than 
prince or Pope, and when the abbot preached 
the second great crusade, promising eternal 
salvation to those who took up arms against 
the unbelievers, whether to wrest from 
them the Holy Sepulchre or to plant the 
cross among the wild heathen on the Baltic, 
his heart burned hot within him. It was 
a long way to the Holy Land, but with the 
Baltic robbers his people had a grievous 
score to settle. Their yells had sounded 
in his boyish ears as they ravished the 
shores of his fatherland, penetrating with 
murder and pillage almost to his peaceful 
home. And so, while he lent a diligent ear 
to the teachings of the church, earning the 
name of the "most learned clerk" in the 
cloister of Ste. Genevieve in Paris, daily he 
laid the breviary aside and took up sword 
and lance, learning the arts of modern war- 
fare with the graces of chivalry. In the 
old way of fighting, man to man, the men of 
the North had been the equals of any, if 
not their betters ; but against the new 
methods of warfare their prowess availed 
little. Absalon, the monk, kept his body 



96 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

strong while soul and mind matured. When 
nothing more adventurous befell, he chopped 
down trees for the cloister hearths. But 
oftener the clash of arms echoed in the 
quiet halls, or the peaceful brethren crossed 
themselves as they watched him break an 
unruly horse in the cloister fen. Saxo 
tells us that he swam easily in full armor, 
and in more than one campaign in later 
years saved drowning comrades who were 
not so well taught. 

The while he watched rising all about some 
of the finest churches in Christendom. It 
was the era of cathedral building in Europe. 
The Romanesque style of architecture had 
reached its highest development in the very 
France where he spent his young manhood's 
years, and the Gothic, with its stamp of 
massive strength, was beginning to displace 
its gentler curve. Ten years of such an 
environment, in a land teeming with his- 
toric traditions, rounded out the man who 
set his face toward home, bent on redeem- 
ing his people from the unjust reproach of 
being mere "barbarians of the North." 

It was a stricken Denmark to which he 
came back. Three claimants were fighting 
for the crown. The land was laid waste by 




Absalon 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 97 

sea-rovers, who saw their chance to raid 
defenceless homes while the men able to 
bear arms were following the rival kings. 
The people had lost hope. Just when 
Absalon returned, peace was made between 
the claimants. Knud, Svend, and Valdemar, 
his foster brother of old, divided up the 
country between them. They swore a dear 
oath to keep the pact, but for all that " the 
three kingdoms did not last three days." 
The treacherous Svend waited only for a 
chance to murder both his rivals, and it 
came quickly, when he and Valdemar were 
the guests of Knud at Roskilde. They had 
eaten and drunk together and were gathered 
in the " Storstue," the big room of the 
house, when Knud saw Svend whispering 
aside with his men. With a sudden fore- 
boding of evil, he threw his arms about 
Valdemar's shoulders and kissed him. The 
young King, who was playing chess with 
one of his men, looked up in surprise and 
asked what it meant. Just then Svend left 
the hall, and his henchmen fell upon the 
two with drawn swords. Knud was cut 
down at once, his head cleft in twain. Val- 
demar upset the table with the candles and, 
wrapping his cloak about his arm to ward off 
11 



98 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

the blows that showered upon him, knocked 
his assailants right and left and escaped, 
badly wounded. 

Ab salon came into the room as Knud fell 
and, thinking it was Valdemar, caught him 
in his arms and took his wounded head in his 
lap. Sitting there in utter sorrow and 
despair, heedless of the tumult that raged 
in the darkness around him, he felt the 
King's garment and knew that the man 
who was breathing his last in his arms 
was not his friend. He laid the lifeless 
body down gently and left the hall. The 
murderers barred his way, but he brushed 
their swords and spears aside and strode 
forth unharmed. Valdemar had found a 
horse and made for Fjenneslev, twenty 
miles away, with all speed, and there Absalon 
met him and his brother Esbern in the morn- 
ing. 

King Svend sought him high and low to 
finish his dastardly work, while on Thing he 
wailed loudly before the people that Valde- 
mar and Knud had tried to kill him, showing 
in proof of it his cloak, which he had rent 
with his own sword. But Valdemar's friends 
were wide awake. Esbern flew through 
the island on his fleet horse in Valdemar's 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 99 

clothes, leading his pursuers a merry dance, 
and when the young King's wound was 
healed, he found him a boat and ferried him 
across to the mainland, where the people 
flocked to his standard. When Svend would 
have followed, it was the Lady Inge who 
scuttled his ship by night and gave her 
foster son the start he needed. There fol- 
lowed a short and sharp struggle that ended 
on Grathe Heath with the utter rout of 
Svend's forces. He himself was killed, and 
Valdemar at last was King of all Denmark. 
From that time the three friends were 
inseparable as in the old days when they 
played about the fields of Fjenneslev. Ab- 
salon was the keeper of the King's conscience 
who was not afraid to tell him the truth 
when he needed to hear it. And where 
they were Esbern was found, never waver- 
ing in his loyalty to either. Within a year 
Absalon was made bishop of Roskilde, the 
chief See of Denmark. Saxo innocently 
discovers to us King Valdemar's little ruse 
to have his friend chosen. He was yet a 
very young man, scarce turned thirty, and 
had not been considered at all for the va- 
cancy. There were three candidates, all 
of powerful families, and, according to 



ioo HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

ecclesiastical law, the brethren of the chapter 
were the electors. The King went to their 
meeting and addressed them in person. 
Nothing was farther from him, he said, 
than to wish to interfere with their proper 
rights. Each must do as his conscience 
dictated, unhindered. And with that he 
laid on the table four books with blank 
leaves and bade them write down their 
names in them, each for his own choice, to 
get the matter right on the record. The 
brethren thanked him kindly and all voted 
"nicely together" for Absalon. So three 
of the books were wasted. But presently 
Saxo found good use for them. 

For now had come the bishop's chance of 
putting in practice the great abbot's pre- 
cepts. "Pray and fight" was the motto 
he had written into the Knights Templars' 
rule, and Absalon had made it his own. 
Of what use was it to build up the church 
at home, when any day might see it raided 
by its enemies who were always watching 
their chance outside ? The Danish waters 
swarmed with pirates, the very pagans 
against whom Abbot Bernard had preached 
his crusade. Of them all the Wends were 
the worst, as they were the most powerful 



AB SALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 101 

of the Slav tribes that still resisted the 
efforts of their neighbors, the Christian 
Germans, to dislodge them from their old 
home on the Baltic. They lived in the 
island of Riigen, fairly in sight of the Danish 
shores. Every favoring wind blew them 
across the sea in shoals to burn and ravage. 
The Danes, once the terror of the seas, 
had given over roving when they accepted 
the White Christ in exchange for Thor and 
his hammer, and now, when they would be 
at peace, they were in turn beset by this 
relentless enemy, who burned their homes 
and their crops and dragged the peaceful 
husbandman away to make him a thrall or 
offer him up as a sacrifice to heathen idols. 
More than a third of all Denmark lay waste 
under their ferocious assault. Here was 
the blow to be struck if the country was to 
have peace and the church prosperity. 

The chance to strike came speedily. Ab- 
salon had been bishop only a few months 
when, on the evening before Palm Sunday, 
word was brought that the enemy had 
landed, twenty-four ship-crews strong, and 
were burning and murdering as usual. 
Absalon marshalled his eighteen house- 
carles and such of the country-folk as he 



102 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

could, and fell upon the Wends, routing 
them utterly. A bare handful escaped, the 
rest were killed, while the bishop lost but a 
single man. He said mass next morning, 
red-handed it is true, but one may well 
believe that for all that his Easter message 
reached hearts filled with a new, glad hope 
for their homes and for the country. That 
was a bishop they could understand. So the 
first blow Absalon struck for his people was 
at home. But he did not long wait for the 
enemy to come to him. Half his long and 
stirring life he lived on the seas, seeking 
them there. Saxo mentions, in speaking 
of his return from one of his cruises, that 
he had then been nine months on shipboard. 
And in a way he was shepherding his flock 
there, if it was with a scourge ; for, many 
years before, a Danish king had punished 
the Wends in their own home and laid their 
lands under the See of Roskilde, though 
little good it did them or any one else then. 
But when Absalon had got his grip, there 
were days when he baptized as many as 
a thousand of them into the true faith. 

He was not altogether alone in the stand 
he took. Here and there, from very neces- 
sity, the people had organized to resist the 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 103 

invaders, but as no one could tell where 
they would strike next, they were not often 
successful, and fear and discouragement 
sat heavy on the land. From his own 
city of Roskilde a little fleet of swift sailers 
under the bold Wedeman had for years 
waged relentless war upon the freebooters 
and had taken four times the number of 
their own ships. Their crews were organ- 
ized into a brotherhood with vows like an 
order of fighting monks. Before setting 
out on a cruise they were shriven and 
absolved. Their vows bound them to un- 
ceasing vigilance, to live on the plainest of 
fare, to sleep on their arms, ready for instant 
attack, and to the rescue of Christians, 
wherever they were found in captivity. 
The Roskilde guild became the strong core 
of the King's armaments in his score of 
campaigns against the Wends. 

Perhaps it was not strange that Valdemar 
should be of two minds about venturing 
to attack so formidable an enemy in his own 
house. The nation was cowed and slow 
to move. In fact, from the first expedition, 
that started with 250 vessels, only seven 
returned with the standard, keeping up a 
running fight all the way across the Baltic 



104 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

with pursuing Wends. The rest had basely 
deserted. On the way over, the King, 
listening to their doubts and fears, turned 
back himself once, but Absalon, who always 
led in the attack and was the last on the 
homeward run, overtook him and gave him 
the talking to he deserved. Saxo, who was 
very likely there and heard, for there is 
little doubt that he accompanied his master 
on many of the campaigns he so vividly 
describes, gives us a verbatim report of the 
lecture : 

" What wonder," said the bishop, " if 
the words stick in our throats and are nigh 
to stifling us, when such grievous dole is 
ours ! Grieve we must, indeed, to find in 
you such a turncoat that naught but dis- 
honor can come of it. You follow where 
you should lead, and those you should rule 
over, you make your peers. There is noth- 
ing to stop us but our own craven souls, 
hunt as we may for excuses. Is it with 
such laurel you would bind your crown? 
with such high deed you would consecrate 
your reign ?" 

The King was hard hit, and showed it, 
but he walked away without a word. In the 
night a furious storm swept the sea and kept 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 105 

the fleet in shelter four whole days, during 
which Valdemar's anger had time to cool. 
He owned then that Absalon was right, 
and the friends shook hands. The King 
gave order to make sail as soon as the gale 
abated. If there was still a small doubt in 
Absalon's mind as he turned, on taking 
leave, and asked, "What now, if we must 
turn back once more ?" Valdemar set it 
at rest : 

"Then you write me from Wendland," 
he laughed, " and tell me how things are 
there." 

If little glory or gain came to the Danes 
from this first expedition, at least they 
landed in the enemy's country and made 
reprisal for past tort. The spirit of the 
people rose and shamed them for their 
cowardice. When the King's summons went 
round again, as it did speedily, there were 
few laggards. Attacked at home, the Wends 
lost much of the terror they had inspired. 
Before many moons, the chronicle records, 
the Danes cut their spear-shafts short, 
that they might the more handily get at 
the foe. Scarce a year passed that did not 
see one or more of these crusades. Absalon 
preached them all, and his ship was ever 



106 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

first in landing. In battle he and the King 
fought shoulder to shoulder. In the spring 
of 1 169, he had at last his wish : the heathen 
idols were destroyed and their temples 
burned. 

The holy city of the Wends, Arcona, stood 
on a steep cliff, inaccessible save from the 
west, where a wall a hundred feet high 
defended it. While the sacred banner Stan- 
itza waved over it the Danes might burn 
and kill, but the power of Svantevit was 
unbroken. Svantevit was the god of gods 
in whose presence his own priests dared 
not so much as breathe. When they had 
to, they must go to the door and breathe 
in the open, a good enough plan if Saxo's 
disgust at the filth of the Wendish homes 
was justified. Svantevit was a horrid mon- 
ster with four heads, and girt about with a 
huge sword. Up till then the Christian 
arms had always been stayed at his door, 
but this time the King laid siege to Arcona, 
determined to make an end of him. Some 
of the youngsters in his army, making a 
mock assault upon the strong walls, dis- 
covered an accidental hollow under the 
great tower over which the Stanitza flew 
and, seizing upon a load of straw that was 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 107 

handy, stuffed it in and set it on fire. It was 
done in a frolic, but when the tower caught 
fire and was burned and the holy standard 
fell, Absalon was quick to see his advantage, 
and got the King to order a general assault. 
The besieged Wends, having no water, 
tried to put out the fire with milk, but, says 
the chronicle, "it only fed the flames." 
They fought desperately till, % between fire 
and foe, they were seized with panic and, 
calling loudly upon Absalon in their extrem- 
ity, offered to give up their city. The 
army clamored for the revenge that was at 
last within their grasp, and the King hesi- 
tated ; but Absalon met the uproar firmly, 
reminding them that they had crossed the 
seas to convert the heathen, not to sack their 
towns. 

The city was allowed to surrender and the 
people were spared, but Svantevit and his 
temple were destroyed. A great crowd 
of his followers had gathered to see him 
crush his enemies at the last, and Absalon 
cautioned the men who cut the idol down 
to be careful that he did not fall on them 
and so seem to justify their hopes. "He 
fell with so great a noise that it was a won- 
der," says Saxo, naively; "and in the same 



108 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

moment the fiend ran out of the temple 
in a black shape with such speed that no 
eye could follow him or see where he went." 
Svantevit was dragged out of the town 
and chopped into bits. That night he fed 
the fires of the camp. So fickle is popular 
favor that when the crowd saw that nothing 
happened, they spurned the god loudly 
before whom they had grovelled in the dust 
till then. 

When they heard of Arcona's fall in the 
royal city of Karents, they hastened with 
offers of surrender, and Absalon went there 
with a single ship's crew to take possession. 
They were met by 6000 armed Wends, who 
guarded the narrow approach to the city. 
In single file they walked between the ranks 
of the enemy, who stood with inverted 
spears, watching them in sullen silence. 
His men feared a trap, but Absalon strode 
ahead unmoved. Coming to the temple 
of their local god, Rygievit, he attacked 
him with his axe and bade his guard fall to, 
which they did. Saxo has left us a unique 
description of this idol that stood behind 
purple hangings, fashioned of oak "in every 
evil and revolting shape. The swallows 
had made their nests in his mouths and 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 109 

throats" (there were seven in so many 
faces) "and filled him up with all manner of 
stinking uncleanness. Truly, for such god 
was such sacrifice fit." He had a sword for 
every one of his seven faces, buckled about 
his ample waist, but for all that he went 
the way of the others, and even had to put 
up with the indignity of the Christian priests 
standing upon him while he was being 
dragged out.^ That seems to have helped 
cure his followers of their faith in him. 
They delivered the temple treasure into the 
hands of the King — seven chests filled with 
money and valuables, among them a silver 
cup which the wretched King Svend had 
sent to Svantevit as a bribe to the Wends for 
joining him against his own country and 
kin. But those days were ended. It was 
the Danes' turn now, and Wendland was 
laid waste until "the swallows found no 
eaves of any house whereunder to build 
their nests and were forced to build them on 
the ships." A sad preliminary to bringing 
the country under the rule of the Prince of 
Peace ; but in the scheme of those days the 
sword was equal partner with the cross in 
leading men to the true God. 

The heathen temples were destroyed and 



no HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

churches built on their sites of the timber 
gathered for the siege of Arcona. The 
people, deserted by their own, accepted the 
Christians' God in good faith, and were bap- 
tized in hosts, thirteen hundred on one day 
and nine hundred on the next. Three days 
and nights Absalon saw no sleep. He did 
nothing half-way. No sooner was he back 
home than he sent over priests and teachers 
supplied with everything, even food for their 
keep, so that they "should not be a burden 
to the people whom they had come to show 
the way to salvation." 

The Wends were conquered, but the end 
was not yet. They had savage neighbors, 
and many a crusade did Absalon lead against 
them in the following years, before the new 
title of the Danish rulers, "King of the Slavs 
and Wends," was much more than an empty 
boast. He organized a regular sea patrol 
of one-fourth of the available ships, of which 
he himself took command, and said mass 
on board much oftener than in the Roskilde 
church. It is the sailor, the warrior, the 
leader of men one sees through all the 
troubled years of his royal friend's life. 
Now the Danish fleet is caught in the inland 
sea before Stettin, unable to make its way 



AB SALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP in 

out, and already the heathen hosts are 
shouting their triumph on shore. It is 
Absalon, then, who finds the way and, as 
one would expect, he forces it. The cap- 
tains wail over the trap and abuse him for 
getting them into it. Absalon, disdaining 
to answer them, leads his ships in single file 
straight for the gap where the Wendish 
fleet lies waiting, and gets the King to attack 
with his horsemen on shore. Between them 
the enemy is routed, and the cowards are 
shamed. But when they come to make 
amends, he is as unmoved as ever and will 
have none of it. Again, when he is leading 
his men to the attack on a walled town, 
a bridge upon which they crowd breaks, 
and it is the bishop who saves his comrades 
from drowning, swimming ashore with them 
in full armor. 

Resting in his castle at Haffn, the present 
Copenhagen, which he built as a defence 
against the sea-rovers, he hears, while in his 
bath, his men talking, of strange ships that 
are sailing into the Sound, and, hastily 
throwing on his clothes, gives chase and 
kills their crews, for they were pirates 
whose business was murder, and they merely 
got their deserts. In the pursuit his archers 



ii2 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

"pinned the hands of the rowers to the oars 
with their arrows" and crippled them, so 
skilful had much practice made them. 
Turn the leaf of Saxo's chronicle, and we 
find him under Riigen with his fleet, protect- 
ing the now peaceful Wendish fishermen 
in their autumn herring-catch, on which 
their livelihood depended. Of such stuff 
was made the bishop who 

"Used his trusty Danish sword 
As the Pope his staff in Rome." 

Wherever danger threatens Valdemar and 
Absalon, Esbern is found, too, earning the 
name of the Fleet (Snare), which the people 
had fondly given to their favorite. Where 
the fighting was hardest, he was sure to be. 
The King's son had ventured too far and 
was caught in a tight place by an over- 
whelming force, when Esbern pushed his 
ship in between him and the enemy and 
bore the brunt of a fight that came near to 
making an end of him. He had at last only 
a single man left, but the two made a stand 
against a hundred. "When the heathen saw 
his face they fled in terror." At last they 
knocked him senseless with a stone and 
would have killed him, but in the nick of 
time the King's men came to the rescue. 



AB SALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 113 

Coming home from Norway he ran afoul 
of forty pirate ships under the coast of See- 
land. He tried to steal past ; forty against 
one were heavy odds. But it was moon- 
light and he was discovered. The pirates 
lay across his course and cut him off. Es- 
bern made ready for a fight and steered 
straight into the middle of them. The 
steersman complained that he had no armor, 
and he gave him his own. He beat his pur- 
suers off again and again, but the wind 
slackened and they were closing in once 
more, swearing by their heathen gods that 
they would have him dead or alive, for a 
Danish prisoner on one of their ships had 
told who he was. But Esbern had more 
than one string to his bow. He sent a man 
aloft with flint and steel to strike fire in the 
top, and the pirates, believing that he was 
signalling to a fleet he had in ambush, fled 
helter-skelter. Esbern got home safe. 

The German emperors' fingers had always 
itched for the over-lordship of the Danish 
isles, and they have not ceased to do so to 
this day. When Frederick Barbarossa drove 
Alexander III from Rome and set up a rival 
Pope in his place, Archbishop Eskild of 
Lund, who was the Primate of the North, 



ii 4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

championed the exiled Pope's case, and 
Valdemar, whose path the ambitious priest 
had crossed more than once, let it be known 
that he inclined to the Emperor's cause, in 
part probably from mere pique, perhaps 
also because he thought it good politics. 
The archbishop in a rage summoned Absalon 
and bade him join him in a rising against the 
King. Absalon's answer is worthy the man 
and friend : 

"My oath to you I will keep, and in this 
wise, that I will not counsel you to your own 
undoing. Whatever your cause against the 
King, war against him you cannot, and 
succeed. And this know, that never will 
I join with you against my liege lord, to 
whom I have sworn fealty and friendship 
with heart and soul all the days of my life." 

He could not persuade the archbishop, 
who went his own way and was beaten and 
exiled for a season, nor could he prevent the 
King from yielding to the blandishments of 
Frederick and getting mixed up in the papal 
troubles ; but he went with him to Germany 
and saved him at the last moment from 
committing himself by making him leave 
the church council just as the anti-pope 
was about to pronounce sentence of excom- 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 115 

munication against Alexander. He com- 
manded Absalon to remain, as a servant 
of the church, but Absalon replied calmly 
that he was not there in that capacity, but 
as an attendant on his King, and must fol- 
low where he went. It appeared speedily 
that the Emperor's real object was to get 
Valdemar to own him as his over-lord, and 
this he did, to Absalon's great grief, on the 
idle promise that Frederick would join him 
in his war upon all the Baltic pagans. 
However, it was to be a purely personal 
matter, in nowise affecting his descendants. 
That much was saved, and Absalon lived 
long enough to fling back, as the counsellor 
of Valdemar's son, from behind the stout 
wall he built at Denmark's southern gate, 
the Emperor's demand for homage, with 
the reply that " the King ruled in Denmark 
with the same right as the Emperor in Ger- 
many, and was no man's subject." 

However grievously Absalon had offended 
the aged archbishop, when after forty years 
in his high office illness compelled him to 
lay it down, he could find no one so worthy 
to step into his shoes. He sent secretly 
to Rome and got the Pope's permission to 
name his own successor, before he called a 



n6 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

meeting of the church. The account of 
what followed is the most singular of all 
Saxo's stories. Valdemar did not know 
what was coming and, fearing fresh trouble, 
got the archbishop to swear on the bones of 
the saints before them all that he was not 
moved to abdication by hate of the King, 
or by any coercion whatever. Then the 
venerable priest laid his staff, his mitre, 
and his ring on the altar and announced 
that he had done with it all forever. But 
he had made up his mind not to use the 
power given him by the Pontiff. They 
might choose his successor themselves. He 
would do nothing to influence their action. 

The bishops and clergy went to the King 
and asked him if he had any choice. The 
King said he had, but if he made it known 
he would get no thanks for it and might 
estrange his best friend. If he did not, he 
would certainly be committing a sin. He 
did not know what to do. 

"Name him," said they, and Valdemar 
told them it was the bishop of Roskilde. 

At that the old archbishop got up and 
insisted on the election then and there ; 
but Absalon would have none of it. The 
burden was too heavy for his shoulders, 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 117 

he said. However, the clergy seized him, 
" being," says Saxo, who without doubt 
was one of them, " the more emboldened to 
do so as the archbishop himself laid hands 
upon him first." Intoning the hymn sung 
at archiepiscopal consecrations, they tried 
to lead him to the altar. He resisted with 
all his might and knocked several of the 
brethren down. Vestments were torn and 
scattered, and a mighty ruction arose, to 
which the laity, not to be outdone, added by 
striking up a hymn of their own. Arch- 
bishop and King tried vainly to make peace ; 
the clamor and battle only rose the higher. 
Despite his struggles, Absalon was dragged 
to the high seat, but as they were about to 
force him into it, he asked leave to say a 
single word, and instantly appealed his 
case to the Pope. So there was an end ; 
but when the aged Eskild, on the plea of 
weakness, begged him to pronounce the 
benediction, he refused warily, because so 
he would be exercising archiepiscopal func- 
tions and would be de facto incumbent of 
the office. 1 

1 That all this in no way affected the personal relations 
of the two men Saxo assures us in one of the little human 
touches with which his chronicle abounds. When Eskild 



n8 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Here, as always, Absalon thought less of 
himself than of his country, so the event 
showed. For when the Pope heard his 
plea, though he decided against him, he 
allowed him to hold the bishopric of Ros- 
kilde together with the higher office, and 
so he was left at Valdemar's side to help 
finish their work of building up Denmark 
within and without. At Roskilde he spent, 
as a matter of fact, most of his time while 
Valdemar lived. At Lund he would have 
been in a distant part of the country, parted 
from his friend and out of touch with the 
things that were the first concern of his 
life. 

They were preparing to aim a decisive 
blow against the Pomeranian pagans when 
Valdemar died, on the very day set for the 
sailing. The parting nearly killed Absalon. 
Saxo draws a touching picture of him 

was going away to end his days as a monk in the monas- 
tery of Clairvaux, he rested awhile with Absalon at his 
castle Haffn, where he was received as a father. The old 
man suffered greatly from cold feet, and Absalon made a 
box with many little holes in, and put a hot brick in it. 
With this at his feet, Eskild was able to sleep, and he was 
very grateful to Absalon, both because of the comfort it gave 
him and " because that he perceived that filial piety rather 
than skill in the healer's art " prompted the invention. 



ARSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 119 

weeping bitterly as he said the requiem 
mass over his friend, and observes : "Who 
can doubt that his tears, rising with the 
incense, gave forth a peculiar and agreeable 
savour in high heaven before God ?" The 
plowmen left their fields and carried the 
bier, with sobs and lamentations, to the church 
in Ringsted, where the great King rests. 
His sorrow laid Absalon on a long and 
grievous sick-bed, from which he rose only 
when Valdemar's son needed and called 
him. 

In the fifteen years that follow we see his 
old warlike spirit still unbroken. Thus his 
defiance of the German Emperor, whose 
anger was hot. Frederick, in revenge, per- 
suaded the Pomeranian duke Bugislav to 
organize a raid on Denmark with a fleet of 
five hundred sail. Scant warning reached 
Absalon of the danger. King Knud was 
away, and there was no time to send for 
him. Mustering such vessels as were near, 
he sailed across the Baltic and met the 
enemy under Riigen the day after Whit- 
suntide (1 184). The bishop had gone ashore 
to say mass on the beach, when word was 
brought that the great fleet was in sight. 
Hastily pulling off his robe and donning ar- 



120 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

mor instead, he made for his ship with the 
words : "Now let our swords sing the praise 
of God." The Pomeranians were taken 
completely by surprise. They did not know 
the Danes were there, and when they heard 
the archbishop's dreaded war-cry raised, 
they turned and fled in such terror and 
haste that eighteen of their ships were run 
down and sunk with all on board. On one, 
a rower hanged himself for fear of falling 
into the hands of the Danes. Absalon gave 
chase, and the rout became complete. 
Of the five hundred ships only thirty-five 
escaped ; all the rest were either sunk or 
taken. Duke Bugislav soon after became 
a vassal of Denmark, and of the Emperor's 
plots there was an end. 

It was the last blow, and the story of 
it went far and wide. Absalon's work 
was nearly done. Denmark was safe from 
her enemies. The people were happy and 
prosperous. Valdemar's son ruled unchal- 
lenged, and though he was childless, by his 
side stood his brother, a manly youth who, 
not yet full grown, had already shown such 
qualities of courage and sagacious leadership 
that the old archbishop could hang up the 
sword with heart at ease. The promise was 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 121 

kept. The second Valdemar became Den- 
mark's royal hero for all time. Absalon's 
last days were devoted to strengthening the 
Church, around which he had built such a 
stout wall. He built churches and cloisters, 
and guided them with a wise and firm hand. 
And he made Saxo, his clerk, set it all down 
as an eye-witness of these things, and as 
one who came to the task by right ; for, 
says the chronicler, "have not my grand- 
father and his father before him served the 
King well on land and sea, hence why should 
not I serve him with my book-learning?" 
He bears witness that the bishop himself 
is his authority for much that he has written. 
Archbishop Absalon closed his eyes on 
St. Benedict's Day, March 21, 1201, in the 
cloister at Soro which Sir Asker built and 
where he lived his last days in peace. Ab- 
salon's statue of bronze, on horseback, 
battle-axe in hand, stands in the market 
square in Copenhagen, the city he founded 
and of which he is the patron saint ; but his 
body lies within the quiet sanctuary where, 
in the deep forest glades, one listens yet for 
the evensong of the monks, long silent now. 
When his grave was opened, in 1826, the 
lines of his tall form, clad in clerical robes, 



122 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

were yet clearly traceable. The strong 
hands, turned to dust, held a silver chalice 
in which lay his episcopal ring. They are 
there to be seen to-day, with remnants of 
his staff that had partly crumbled away. 
No Dane approaches his grave without 
emotion. "All Denmark grieved for him," 
says a German writer of that day, "and com- 
mended his soul to Jesus Christ, the Prince 
of Peace, for that in his lifetime he had led 
many who were enemies to peace and con- 
cord." In his old cathedral, in Roskilde 
town, lies Saxo, according to tradition under 
an unmarked stone. When he went to rest 
his friend and master had slept five years. 
Esbern outlived his brother three years. 
The hero of so many battles met his death 
at last by an accidental fall in his own house. 
The last we hear of him is at a meeting in the 
Christmas season, 1187, where emissaries of 
Pope Gregory VIII preached a general 
crusade. Their hearers wept at the picture 
they drew of the sufferings Christians were 
made to endure in the Holy Land. Then 
arose Esbern and reminded them of the 
great deeds of the fathers at home and 
abroad. The faith and the fire of Absalon 
were in his words : 



ABSALON, THE WARRIOR BISHOP 123 

"These things they did," he said, "for 
the glory of their name and race, know- 
ing nothing of our holy religion. Shall we, 
believing, do less ? Let us lay aside our 
petty quarrels and take up this greater 
cause. Let us share the sufferings of the 
saints and earn their reward. Perhaps we 
shall win — God keeps the issue. Let him 
who cannot give himself, give of his means. 
So shall all we, sharing the promise, share 
also the reward." 

The account we have says that many 
took the cross, such was the effect of his 
words, more likely of the man and what he 
was and had been in the sight of them all 
throughout his long life. 



KING VALDEMAR, AND THE STORY 
OF THE DANNEBROG 



KING VALDEMAR, AND THE STORY 
OF THE DANNEBROG 

To the court of King Ottocar of Bohemia 
there came in the year 1205 a brilliant 
embassy from far-off Denmark to ask the 
hand of his daughter Dragomir for King 
Valdemar, the young ruler of that country. 
Sir Strange 1 Ebbeson and Bishop Peder 
Suneson were the spokesmen, and many 
knights, whose fame had travelled far in the 
long years of fighting to bring the Baltic 
pagans under the cross, rode with them. 
The old king received them with delight. 
Valdemar was not only a good son-in-law 
for a king to have, being himself a great and 
renowned ruler, but he was a splendid 
knight, tall and handsome, of most cour- 
teous bearing, ambitious, manly, and of 
ready wit. So their suit prospered well. 
The folk-song tells how they fared ; how, 
according to the custom of those days, Sir 
Strange wedded the fair princess by proxy 

1 Pronounce as Strangle, with the 1 left out. 
127 



128 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

for his lord, and how King Ottocar, when he 
bade her good-by, took this promise of her : 

In piety, virtue, and fear of God, 
Let all thy days be spent; 
And ever thy subjects be thy thought, 
Their hopes on thy care be bent. 

The daughter kept her vow. Never was 
queen more beloved of her people than 
Dagmar. That was the name they gave 
her in Denmark, for the Bohemian Dragomir 
was strange to them. Dagmar meant day- 
break in their ancient tongue, and it really 
seemed as if a new and beautiful day dawned 
upon the land in her coming. The dry 
pages of history have little enough to tell 
of her beyond the simple fact of her mar- 
riage and untimely death, though they are 
filled with her famous husband's deeds ; 
but not all of his glorious campaigns that 
earned for him the name of "The Victor" 
have sunk so deep into the people's memory, 
or have taken such hold of their hearts, as 
the lovely queen who 

Came without burden, she came with peace; 
She came the good peasant to cheer. 

Through all the centuries the people have 
sung her praise, and they sing it yet. Of 




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KING VALDEMAR 129 

the many folk-songs that have come down 
from the middle ages, those that tell of 
Queen Dagmar are the sweetest, as they are 
the most mournful, for her happiness was as 
brief as her life was beautiful. 

They sailed homeward over sunny seas, 
until they came to the shore where the royal 
lover awaited his bride, impatiently scan- 
ning the horizon for the gilded dragon's 
head of the ship that bore her. The min- 
strel sings of the great wedding that was 
held in the old city of Ribe. 1 The gray old 
cathedral in which they knelt together still 
stands ; but of Valdemar's strong castle 
only a grass-grown hill is left. It was the 
privilege of a bride in those days to ask a 
gift of her husband on the morning after the 
wedding, and have it granted without ques- 
tion. Two boons did Dagmar crave, 

"right early in the morning, long before it was day ": 

one, that the plow-tax might be forgiven 
the peasant, and that those who for rising 
against it had been laid in irons be set free ; 
the other, that the prison door of Bishop 
Valdemar be opened. Bishop Valdemar 
was the arch-enemy of the King. The first 

1 Pronounced Reebe, in two syllables. 

K 



130 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

request he granted ; but the other he refused 
for cause : 

An' he comes out, Bishop Valdemar, 
Widow he makes you this year. 

And he did his worst ; for in the end the 
King yielded to Dagmar's prayers, and 
much mischief came of it. 

Seven years the good queen lived. Seven 
centuries have not dimmed the memory 
of them, or of her. The King was away 
in a distant part of the country when they 
sent to him in haste with the message that 
the queen was dying. The ballad tells of 
his fears as he sees Dagmar's page coming, 
and they proved only too true. 

The king his checker-board shut in haste, 
The dice they rattled and rung. 
Forbid it God, who dwells in heaven, 
That Dagmar should die so young. 

In the wild ride over field and moor, the King 
left his men far behind : 

When the king rode out of Skanderborg 
Him followed a hundred men. 
But when he rode o'er Ribe bridge, 
Then rode the king alone. 

The tears of weeping women told him as 
he thundered over the drawbridge of the 
castle that he was too late. But Dagmar 



KING VALDEMAR 131 

had only swooned. As he throws himself 
upon her bed she opens her eyes, and smiles 
upon her husband. Her last prayer, as her 
first, is for mercy and peace. Her sin, she 
says, is not great ; she has done nothing 
worse than to lace her silken sleeves on a 
Sunday. Then she closes her eyes with a 
tired sigh : 

The bells of heaven are chiming for me; 
No more may I stay to speak. 

Thus the folk-song. Long before Dag- 
mar went tO j her rest, Bishop Valdemar 
had stirred up all Germany to wreak his 
vengeance upon the King. He was an am- 
bitious, unscrupulous priest, who hated his 
royal master because he held himself entitled 
to the crown, being the natural son of 
King Knud, who was murdered at Roskilde, 
as told in the story of Absalon. While 
they were yet young men, when he saw that 
the people followed his rival, he set the 
German princes against Denmark, a task 
he never found hard. But young Valdemar 
made short work of them. He took the 
strong cities on the Elbe and laid the lands 
of his adversaries under the Danish crown. 
The bishop he seized, and threw him into 
the dungeon of Soborg Castle, where he 



132 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

had sat thirteen years when Dagmar's 
prayers set him free. He could hardly 
walk when he came out, but he could hate, 
and all the world knew it. The Pope bound 
him with heavy oaths never to return to 
Denmark, and made him come to Italy so 
that he could keep an eye on him himself. 
But two years had not passed before he 
broke his oath, and fled to Bremen, where 
the people elected him to the vacant arch- 
bishopric and its great political power. 
Forthwith he began plotting against his 
native land. 

In the bitter feud between the Guelphs 
and the Ghibellines he found his oppor- 
tunity. One of the rival emperors marched 
an army north to help the perjured priest. 
King Valdemar hastened to meet them, 
but on the eve of battle the Emperor was 
slain by one of his own men. On Sunday, 
when the archbishop was saying mass in 
the Bremen cathedral, an unknown knight, 
the visor of whose helmet was closed so 
that no one saw his face, strode up to the 
altar, and laying a papal bull before him, 
cried out that he was accursed, and under 
the ban of the church. The people fled, 
and forsaken by all, the wretched man 



KING VALDEMAR 133 

turned once more to Rome in submission. 
But though the Pope forgave him on con- 
dition that he meddle no more with politics, 
war, or episcopal office, another summer 
found him wielding sword and lance against 
the man he hated, this time under the 
banner of the Guelphs. The Germans had 
made another onset on Denmark, but again 
King Valdemar defeated them. The bishop 
intrenched himself in Hamburg, and made 
a desperate resistance, but the King carried 
the city by storm. The beaten and hope- 
less man fled, and shut himself up in a cloister 
in Hanover, where daily and nightly he 
scourged himself for his sins. If it is true 
that "hell was fashioned by the souls that 
hated," not all the penance of all the years 
must have availed to save him from the 
torments of the lost. 

Denmark now had peace on its southern 
border. Dagmar was dead, and Valdemar, 
whose restless soul yearned for new worlds 
to conquer, turned toward the east where 
the wild Esthland tribes were guilty of even 
worse outrages than the Wends before 
Absalon tamed them. The dreadful cruel- 
ties practised by these pagans upon chris- 
tian captives cried aloud to all civilized 



i 3 4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Europe, and Valdemar took the cross " for 
the honor of the Virgin Mary and the abso- 
lution of his sins," and gathered a mighty 
fleet, the greatest ever assembled in Danish 
waters. With more than a thousand ships 
he sailed across the Baltic. The Pope sped 
them with his apostolic blessing, and took 
king and people into his especial care, for- 
bidding any one to attack the country while 
they were away converting the heathen. 
Archbishop Anders led the crusade with 
the king. As the fleet approached the 
shore they saw it covered with an innu- 
merable host of the enemy. So great was 
their multitude that the crusaders quailed 
before the peril of landing ; but the arch- 
bishop put heart into them, and led the fleet 
in fervent prayer to the God of battle. Then 
they landed without hindrance. 

There was an old stronghold there called 
Lyndanissa that had fallen into decay. 
The crusaders busied themselves for two 
days with building another and better fort. 
On the third day, being St. Vitus' Day, they 
rested, fearing no harm. The Esthlanders 
had not troubled them. Some of their 
chiefs had even come in with an offer of 
surrender. They were willing to be con- 



KING VALDEMAR 135 

verted, they said, and the priests were bap- 
tizing them after vespers, while the camp 
was making ready for the night, when sud- 
denly the air was filled with the yells of count- 
less savages. On every side they broke 
from the woods, where they had been gather- 
ing unsuspected, and overwhelmed the camp. 
The guards were hewn down, the outposts 
taken, and the King's men were falling back 
in confusion, their standard lost, when 
Prince Vitislav of Riigen who had been 
camping with his men in a hollow between 
the sand-hills, out of the line of attack, 
threw himself between them and the Esth- 
landers, and gave the Danes time to form 
their lines. 

In the twilight of the June evening the 
battle raged with great fury. With the 
King at their head, who had led them to 
victory on so many hard-fought fields, the 
Danes drove back their savage foes time 
after time, literally hewing their way through 
their ranks with sword and battle-axe. 
But they were hopelessly outnumbered. 
Their hearts misgave them as they saw ten 
heathen spring out of the ground for every 
one that was felled. The struggle grew 
fiercer as night came on. The Christians 



136 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

were fighting for life ; defeat meant that 
they must perish to a man, by the sword 
or upon pagan altars ; escape there was 
none. Upon the cliff overlooking the battle- 
field the archbishop and his priests were 
praying for success to the King's arms. 
Tradition that has been busy with this 
great battle all through the ages tells how, 
while the aged bishop's hands were raised 
toward heaven, victory leaned to the Danes ; 
but when he grew tired, and let them fall, 
the heathen won forward, until the priests 
held up his hands and once more the tide 
of battle rolled back from the shore, and the 
Christian war-cry rose higher. 

Suddenly, in the clash of steel upon steel 
and the wild tumult of the conflict, there 
arose a great and wondering cry "the 
banner! the banner! a miracle!" and 
Christian and pagan paused to listen. Out 
of the sky, as it seemed, over against the 
hill upon which the priests knelt, a blood- 
red banner with a great white cross was 
seen falling into the ranks of the Christian 
knights, and a voice resounded over the 
battle-field, "Bear this high, and victory 
shall be yours." With the exultant cry, 
" For God and the King," the crusaders 




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KING VALDEMAR 137 

seized it, and charged the foe. Terror- 
stricken, the Esthlanders wavered, then 
turned, and fled. The battle became a 
massacre. Thousands were slain. The 
chronicles say that the dead lay piled 
fathom-high on the field that ran red with 
blood. Upon it, when the pursuit was over, 
Valdemar knelt with his men, and they 
bowed their heads in thanksgiving, while 
the venerable archbishop gave praise to 
God for the victory. 

That is the story of the Dannebrog which 
has been the flag of the Danes seven hundred 
years. Whether the archbishop had brought 
it with him intending to present it to King 
Valdemar, and threw it down among the 
fighting hordes in the moment of extreme 
peril, or whether, as some think, the Pope 
himself had sent it to the crusaders with a 
happy inspiration, the fact remains that it 
came to the Danes in this great battle, and 
on the very day which, fifty years before, 
had seen the fall of Arcona, and the end of 
idol-worship among the western Slavs. 
Three hundred years the standard flew over 
the Danes fighting on land and sea. Then 
it was lost in a campaign against the Hol- 
stein counts and, when recovered half a 



138 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

century later, was hung up in the cathedral 
at Slesvig, where gradually it fell to pieces. 
In the first half of the Nineteenth Century, 
when national feeling and national pride 
were at their lowest ebb, it was taken down 
with other moth-eaten old banners, one day 
when they were cleaning up, and somebody 
made a bonfire of them in the street. Such 
was the fate of "the flag that fell from heav- 
en," the sacred standard of the Danes. 
But it was not the end of it. The Danne- 
brog flies yet over the Denmark of the 
Valdemars, no longer great as then, it is 
true, nor master of its ancient foes ; but 
the world salutes it with respect, for there 
was never blot of tyranny or treason upon 
it, and its sons own it with pride wherever 
they go. 

King Valdemar knighted five and thirty 
of his brave men on the battle-field, and 
from that day the Order of the Dannebrog 
is said to date. It bears upon a white 
crusader's cross the slogan of the great 
fight " For God and the King," and on its 
reverse the date when it was won, " June 15, 
1 2 19." The back of paganism was broken 
that day, and the conversion of all Esth- 
land followed soon. King Valdemar built 



KING VALDEMAR 139 

the castle he had begun before he sailed 
home, and called it Reval, after one of the 
neighboring tribes. The Russian city of 
that name grew up about it and about the 
church which Archbishop Anders reared. 
The Dannebrog became its arms, and its 
people call it to this day "the city of the 
Danes." 

Denmark was now at the height of her 
glory. Her flag flew over all the once hos- 
tile lands to the south and east, clear into 
Russia. The Baltic was a Danish inland 
sea. King Valdemar was named "Victor" 
with cause. His enemies feared him ; his 
people adored him. In a single night foul 
treachery laid the whole splendid structure 
low. The King and young Valdemar, Dag- 
mar's son, with a small suite of retainers 
had spent the day hunting on the little 
island of Lyo. Count Henrik of Schwerin, 
— the Black Count they called him, — who 
had just returned from a pilgrimage to the 
Holy Land, was his guest. The count 
hated Valdemar bitterly for some real or 
fancied injury, but he hid his hatred under 
a friendly bearing and smooth speech. 
He brought the King gifts from the Holy 
Sepulchre, hunted with him, and was his 



140 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

friend. But by night, when the King and 
his son slept in their tent, unguarded, since 
no enemy was thought to be near, he fell 
upon them with his cutthroats, bound and 
gagged them despite their struggles, and 
gathering up all the valuables that lay 
around, to put the finishing touch upon his 
villainy, fled with his prisoners " in great 
haste and fear," while the King's men slept. 
When they awoke, and tried to follow, they 
found their ships scuttled. The count's 
boat had been lying under sail all day, 
hidden in a sheltered cove, awaiting his 
summons. 

Germany at last had the lion and its 
whelp in her grasp. In chains and fetters 
they were dragged from one dungeon to 
another. The traitors dared not trust them 
long in any city, however strong. The 
German Emperor shook his fist at Count 
Henrik, but secretly he was glad. He 
would have liked nothing better than to 
have the precious spoil in his own power. 
The Pope thundered in Rome and hurled 
his ban at the thugs. But the Black 
Count's conscience was as swarthy as his 
countenance ; and besides, had he not 
just been to the Holy Land, and thereby 



KING VALDEMAR 141 

washed himself clean of all his sins, past 
and present ? 

Behind prison walls, comforted only by 
Dagmar's son, sat the King, growing old 
and gray with anger and grief. Denmark 
lay prostrate under the sudden blow, while 
her enemies rose on every side. Day by 
day word came of outbreaks in the con- 
quered provinces. The people did not know 
which way to turn ; the strong hand that 
held the helm was gone, and the ship 
drifted, the prey of every ill wind. It was 
as if all that had been won by sixty years 
of victories and sacrifice fell away in one 
brief season. The forests filled with out- 
laws ; neither peasant nor wayfarer, nor 
yet monk or nun in their quiet retreat, was 
safe from outrage ; and pirates swarmed 
again in bay and sound, where for two gener- 
ations there had been peace. The twice- 
perjured Bishop Valdemar left his cloister 
cell once more and girt on the sword, to take 
the kingdom he coveted by storm. 

He was met by King Valdemar's kinsman 
and friend, Albert of Orlamunde, who has- 
tened to the frontier with all the men he 
could gather. They halted him with a 
treaty of peace that offered to set Valdemar 



142 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

free if he would take his kingdom as a fief 
of the German crown. He, Albert, so it 
was written, was to keep all his lands and 
more, would he but sign it. He did not stop 
to hear the rest, but slashed the parchment 
into ribbons with his sword, and ordered an 
instant advance. The bishop he made short 
work of, and he was heard of no more. But 
in the battle with the German princes Albert 
was defeated and taken prisoner. The door 
of King Valdemar's dungeon was opened only 
to let his friend in. 

After two years and a half in chains, 
Valdemar was ransomed by his people with a 
great sum of gold. The Danish women gave 
their rings and their jewels to bring back 
their king. They flocked about him when 
he returned, and received him like the con- 
queror of old ; but he rode among them gray 
and stern, and his thoughts were far away. 

They had made him swear on oath upon 
the sacrament, and all Denmark's bishops 
with him, before they set him free, that he 
would not seek revenge. But once he was 
back in his own, he sent to Pope Gregory, 
asking him to loose him from an oath wrung 
from him while he was helpless in the power 
of bandits. And the Pope responded that 



KING VALDEMAR 143 

to keep faith with traitors was no man's 
duty. Then back he rode over the River 
Eider into the enemy's land — for they 
had stripped Denmark of all her hard-won 
possessions south of the ancient border of 
the kingdom, except Esthland and Riigen 
— and with him went every man who could 
bear arms in all the nation. He crushed 
the Black Count who tried to block his 
way, and at Bornhoved met the German 
allies who had gathered from far and near 
to give him battle. Well they knew that 
if Valdemar won, the reckoning would be 
terrible. All day they fought, and victory 
seemed to lean toward the Danes, when the 
base Holsteiners, the Danish rear-guard 
whom the enemy had bought to betray 
their king, turned their spears upon his 
army, and decided the day. The battle 
ended in utter rout of Valdemar's forces. 
Four thousand Danish men were slain. The 
King himself fell wounded on the field, 
his eye pierced by an arrow, and would have 
fallen into the hands of the enemy once 
more but for an unknown German knight, 
who took him upon his horse and bore him 
in the night over unfrequented paths to 
Kiel, where he was safe. 



i 4 4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

"But all men said that this great hurt 
befell the King because that he brake the 
oath he swore upon the sacred body of the 
Lord." 

The wars of Valdemar were over, but his 
sorrows were not. Four years later the 
crushing blow fell when Dagmar's son, 
who was crowned king to succeed him, lost 
his life while hunting. With him, says 
the folk-song, died the hope of Denmark. 
The King had other sons, but to Dagmar's 
boy the people had given their love from the 
first, as they had to his gentle mother. 
The old King and his people grieved to- 
gether. 

But Valdemar rose above his sorrows. 
Great as he had been in the days of victory, 
he was greater still in adversity. The 
country was torn by the wars of three- 
score years, and in need of rest. He gave 
his last days to healing the wounds the sword 
had struck. Valdemar, the Victor, became 
Valdemar, the Law-giver. The laws of 
the country had hitherto made themselves. 
They were the outgrowths of the people's 
ancient customs, passed down by word of 
mouth through the generations, and con- 
firmed on Thing from time to time. King 



KING VALDEMAR 145 

Valdemar gave Denmark her first written 
laws that judged between man and man, 
in at least one of her provinces clear down 
into our day. "With law shall land be 
built" begins his code. "The law," it says, 
"must be honest, just, reasonable, and 
according to the ways of the people. It 
must meet their needs, and speak plainly 
so that all men may know and understand 
what the law is. It is not to be made in 
any man's favor, but for the needs of all 
them who live in the land." That is its 
purpose, and "no man shall judge (condemn) 
the law which the King has given and the 
country chosen ; neither shall he (the King) 
take it back without the will of the people." 
That tells the story of Valdemar's day, 
and of the people who are so near of kin 
with ourselves. They were not sovereign 
and subjects ; they were a chosen king and 
a free people, working together "with law 
land to build." 

King Valdemar was married twice. The 
folk-song represents Dagmar as urging the 
King with her dying breath 

" that Bengerd, my lord, that base bad dame 
you never to wife will take." 

Bengerd, or Berengaria, was a Portuguese 

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146 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

princess whom Valdemar married in spite 
of the warning, two years later. As the 
people had loved the fair Dagmar, so they 
hated the proud Southern beauty, whether 
with reason or not. The story of her " morn- 
ing gift," as it has come down to us through 
the mists of time, is very different from the 
other. She asks the King, so the ballad 
has it, to give her Samso, a great and fertile 
island, and "a golden crown 1 for every 
maid," but he tells her not to be quite so 
greedy : 

There be full many an honest maid 
with not dry bread to eat. 

Undismayed, Bengerd objects that Dan- 
ish women have no business to wear silken 
gowns, and that a good horse is not for a 
peasant lad. The King replies patiently 
that what a woman can buy she may wear 
for him, and that he will not take the lad's 
horse if he can feed it. Bengerd is not satis- 
fied. "Let bar the land with iron chains" 
is her next proposal, that neither man nor 
woman enter it without paying tax. Her 
husband says scornfully that Danish kings 
have never had need of such measures, and 

1 A coin, probably. 



KING VALDEMAR 147 

never will. He is plainly getting bored, 
and when she keeps it up, and begrudges the 
husbandman more than "two oxen and a 
cow," he loses his temper, and presumably 
there is a matrimonial tiff. Very likely 
most of this is fiction, bred of the popular 
prejudice. The King loved her, that is 
certain. She was a beautiful high-spirited 
woman, so beautiful that many hundreds 
of years after, when her grave was opened, 
the delicate oval of her skull excited admi- 
ration yet. But the people hated her. 
Twenty generations after her death it was 
their custom when passing her grave to spit 
on it with the exclamation "Out upon thee, 
Bengerd ! God bless the King of Den- 
mark" ; for in good or evil days they never 
wavered in their love and admiration for 
the king who was a son of the first Valde- 
mar, and the heir of his greatness and of 
that of the sainted Absalon. Tradition 
has it that Bengerd was killed in battle, 
having gone with her husband on one of his 
campaigns. "It was not heard in any 
place," says the folk-song wickedly, "that 
any one grieved for her." But the King 
mourned for his beautiful queen to the end 
of his days. 



i 4 8 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Bengerd bore Valdemar three sons upon 
whom he lavished all the affection of his 
lonely old age. Erik he chose as his suc- 
cessor, and to keep his brothers loyal to 
him he gave them great fiefs and thus, 
unknowing, brought on the very trouble 
he sought to avoid, and set his foot on the 
path that led to Denmark's dismember- 
ment after centuries of bloody wars. For 
to his second son Abel he gave Slesvig, and 
Abel, when his brother became king, sought 
alliance with the Holstein count Adolf, 1 
the very one who had led the Germans at 
the fatal battle of Bornhoved. The result 
was a war between the brothers that raged 
seven years, and laid waste the land. Worse 
was to follow, for Abel was only "Abel in 
name, but Cain in deed." But happily 
the old King's eyes were closed then, and he 
was spared the sight of one brother mur- 
dering the other for the kingdom. 

Some foreboding of this seems to have 
troubled him in his last years. It is related 

1 That was the beginning of the Slesvig-Holstein question 
that troubled Europe to our day ; for the fashion set by Abel 
other rulers of his dukedom followed, and by degrees Slesvig 
came to be reckoned with the German duchies, whereas 
up till then it had always been South- Jutland, a part of 
Denmark proper. 



KING VALDEMAR 149 

that once when he was mounting his horse 
to go hunting he fell into a deep reverie, and 
remained standing with his foot in the stir- 
rup a long time, while his men wondered, 
not daring to disturb him. At last one of 
them went to remind him that the sun was 
low in the west. The King awoke from his 
dream, and bade him go at once to a wise old 
hermit who lived in a distant part of the 
country. " Ask him," he said, " what King 
Valdemar was thinking of just now, and 
bring me his answer." The knight went 
away on his strange errand, and found the 
hermit. And this was the message he 
brought back : " Your lord and master 
pondered as he stood by his horse, how his 
sons would fare when he was dead. Tell 
him that war and discord they shall have, 
but kings they will all be." When the King 
heard the prophecy he was troubled in mind, 
and called his sons and all his great knights 
to a council at which he pleaded with them 
to keep the peace. But though they prom- 
ised, he was barely in his grave when riot 
and bloodshed filled the land. The climax 
was reached when Abel inveigled his brother 
to his home with fair words and, once he 
had him in his power, seized him and gave 



ISO HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

him over to his men to do with " as they 
pleased." They understood their master 
only too well, and took King Erik out on 
the fjord in an open boat, and killed him 
there, scarce giving him time to say his 
prayers. They weighted his body with 
his helmet, and sank it in the deep. 

Abel made oath with four and twenty of 
his men that he was innocent of his brother's 
blood, and took the crown after him. But 
the foul crime was soon avenged. Within a 
few years he was himself slain by a peasant 
in a rising of his own people. For a while 
his body lay unburied, the prey of beast 
and bird, and when it was interred in the 
Slesvig cathedral there was no rest for it. 
" Such turmoil arose in the church by night 
that the monks could not chant their vigils," 
and in the end they took him out, and buried 
him in a swamp, with a stake driven through 
the heart to lay his ghost. But clear down 
to our time when people ceased to believe 
in ghosts, the fratricide was seen at night 
hunting through the woods, coal-black and 
on a white horse, with three fiery dogs 
trailing after ; and blue flames burned over 
the sea where they vanished. That was 
how the superstition of the people judged 



KING VALDEMAR 151 

the man whom the nobles and the priests 
made king, red-handed. 

Christopher, the youngest of the three 
brothers, was king last. His end was no 
better than that of the rest. Indeed, it 
was worse. Hardly yet forty years old, he 
died — poisoned, it was said, by the Abbot 
Arnfast, in the sacrament as he knelt at the 
altar-rail in the Ribe cathedral. He was 
buried in the chancel where the penitents 
going to the altar walk over his grave. So, 
of all Valdemar's four sons, not one died a 
peaceful, natural death. But kings they 
all were. 

Valdemar was laid in Ringsted with his 
great father. He sleeps between his two 
queens. Dagmar's grave was disturbed in 
the late middle ages by unknown vandals, 
and the remains of Denmark's best-loved 
queen were scattered. Only a golden cross, 
which she had worn in life, somehow escaped, 
and found its way in course of time into the 
museum of antiquities at Copenhagen, where 
it now is, its chief and priceless treasure. 
There also is a braid of Queen Bengerd's 
hair that was found when her grave was 
opened in 1855. The people's hate had 
followed her even there, and would not let 



152 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

her rest. The slab that covered her tomb 
had been pried off, and a round stone dropped 
into the place made for her head. Other- 
wise her grave was undisturbed. 

" Truly then fell the crown from the 
heads of Danish men," says the old chronicle 
of King Valdemar's death, and black clouds 
were gathering ominously even then over 
the land. But in storm and stress, as in 
days that were fair, the Danish people have 
clung loyally to the memory of their beloved 
King and of his sweet Dagmar. 



HOW THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 
WAS LAID 



HOW THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 
WAS LAID 

On the map of Europe the mainland of 
Denmark looks like a beckoning finger 
pointing due north and ending in a narrow 
sand-reef, upon which the waves of the 
North Sea and of the Kattegat break with 
unceasing clamor and strife. The heart of 
the peninsula, quite one-fourth of its area, 
was fifty years ago a desert, a barren, mel- 
ancholy waste, where the only sign of life 
encountered by the hunter, gunning for 
heath-fowl and plover, was a rare shepherd 
tending a few lonesome sheep, and knitting 
mechanically on his endless stocking. The 
two, the lean sheep and the long stocking, 
together comprised the only industries which 
the heath afforded and was thought capable 
of sustaining. A great change has taken 
place within the span of a single life, and it 
is all due to the clear sight and patient 
devotion of one strong man, the GifTord 
Pinchot of Denmark. The story of that 

iS5 



156 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

unique achievement reads like the tale of 
the Sleeping Beauty who was roused from 
her hundred years' sleep by the kiss of her 
lover prince. The prince who awoke the 
slumbering heath was a captain of engineers, 
Enrico Dalgas by name. 

Not altogether fanciful is the conceit. 
Barren, black, and desolate, the great moor 
gripped the imagination as no smiling 
landscape of field and forest could — does 
yet, where enough of it remains. Far as 
eye reaches the dun heather covers hill 
and plain with its sombre pall. Like gloomy 
sentinels, furry cattails nod in the bog where 
the blue gentian peeps timidly into murky 
pools ; the only human habitation in sight 
some heath boer's ling-thatched hut, flanked 
by rows of peat stacks in vain endeavor 
to stay the sweep of the pitiless west wind. 
On the barrows where the vikings sleep 
their long sleep, the plover pipes its melan- 
choly lay ; between steep banks a furtive 
brook steals swiftly by as if anxious to escape 
from the universal blight. Over it all 
broods the silence of the desert, drowsy with 
the hum of many bees winging their swift 
way to the secret feeding-places they know 
of, where mayflower and anemone hide 




o 
o 
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THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 157 

under the heather, witness that forests 
grew here in the long ago. In midsummer, 
when the purple is on the broom, a strange 
pageant moves on the dim horizon, a shift- 
ing mirage of sea and shore, forest, lake, 
and islands lying high, with ships and 
castles and spires of distant churches — 
the witchery of the heath that speaks in 
the tales and superstitions of its simple 
people. High in the blue soars the lark, 
singing its song of home and hope to its 
nesting mate. This is the heath which, 
denying to the hardest toil all but the barest 
living, has given of its poetry to the Danish 
tongue some of its sweetest songs. 

But in this busy world day-dreams must 
make way for the things that make the 
day count, castles in the air to homes upon 
the soil. The heath had known such in the 
dim past. It had not always been a desert. 
The numberless cairns that lie scattered 
over it, sometimes strung out for miles as 
if marking the highways of the ancients, 
which they doubtless do, sometimes grouped 
where their villages stood, bear witness to 
it. Great battles account for their share, 
and some of them were fought in historic 
times. On Grathe Heath the young King 



158 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Valdemar overcame his treacherous rival 
Svend. Alone and hunted, the beaten man 
sought refuge, Saxo tells us, behind a stump, 
where he was found and slain by one of 
the King's axemen. A chapel was built 
on the spot. More than seven centuries 
later (in 1892) they dug there, and found 
the bones of a man with skull split in two. 

The stump behind which the wretched 
Svend hid was probably the last repre- 
sentative of great forests that grew where 
now is sterile moor. In the bogs trunks 
of oak and fir are found lying as they fell 
centuries ago. The local names preserve 
the tradition, with here and there patches 
of scrub oak that hug the ground close, to 
escape the blast from the North Sea. There 
is one such thicket near the hamlet of 
Taulund — the name itself tells of long- 
forgotten groves — and the story runs 
among the people yet that once squirrels 
jumped from tree to tree without touching 
ground all the way from Taulund to Gjel- 
lerup church, a stretch of more than five 
miles to which the wild things of the woods 
have long been strangers. In the shelter 
of the old forests men dwelt through ages, 
and made the land yield them a living. 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 159 

Some cairns that have been explored span 
over more than a thousand years. They 
were built in the stone age, and served the 
people of the bronze and iron ages suc- 
cessively as burial-places, doubtless the 
same tribes who thus occupied their home- 
steads from generation to generation. That 
they were farmers, not nomads, is proved 
by the clear impression of grains of wheat 
and barley in their burial urns. The seeds 
strayed into the clay and were burned away, 
but the impression abides, and tells the story. 
Clear down to historic times there was 
a thrifty population in many of the now 
barren spots. But a change was slowly 
creeping over the landscape. The country 
was torn by long and bloody wars. The 
big men fought for the land and the little 
ones paid the score, as they always do. 
They were hunted from house and home. 
Next the wild hordes of the Holstein counts 
overran Jutland. Its towns were burned, 
the country laid waste. Great fires swept 
the forests. What ravaging armies had left 
was burned in the smelteries. In the sandy 
crust of the heath there is iron, and swords 
and spears were the grim need of that day. 
The smelteries are only names now. They 



160 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

went, but they took the forests with them, 
and where the ground was cleared the west 
wind broke through, and" ruin followed fast. 
Last of all came the Black Death, and set 
its seal of desolation upon it all. When it 
had passed, the country was a huge grave- 
yard. The heath had moved in. Rovers 
and smugglers found refuge there ; honest 
folk shunned it. Under the heather the 
old landmarks are sometimes found yet, 
and deep ruts made by wheels that long 
since ceased to turn. 

In the Eighteenth Century men began to 
think of reclamation. A thousand German 
colonists were called in and settled on the 
heath, but it was stronger than they, and 
they drifted away until scarce half a hundred 
families remained. The Government tried 
its hand, but there was no one who knew 
just how, and only discouragement resulted. 
Then came the war with Germany in 1864, 
that lost to Denmark a third of her territory. 
The country lay prostrate under the crush- 
ing blow. But it rose above defeat and 
disaster, and once more expectant eyes were 
turned toward the ancient domain that 
had slipped from its grasp. "What was lost 
without must be won within" became the 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 161 

national slogan. And this time the man 
for the task was at hand. 

Enrico Mylius Dalgas was by the acci- 
dent of birth an Italian, his father being 
the Danish consul in Naples ; by descent a 
Frenchman ; by choice and training a Dane, 
typical of the best in that people. He 
came of the Huguenot stock that left 
France after the repeal of the Edict of 
Nantes in 1685 and scattered over Europe, 
to the great good of every land in which 
it settled. They had been tillers of the 
soil from the beginning, and at least two 
of the family, who found homes in Den- 
mark, made in their day notable contribu- 
tions to the cause of advanced, sensible 
husbandry. Enrico's father, though a mer- 
chant, had an open eye for the interests 
which in later years claimed the son's life- 
work. In the diary of a journey through 
Sweden he makes indignant comment upon 
the reckless way in which the people of that 
country dealt with their forests. That he 
was also a man of resolution is shown by 
an incident of the time when Jew-baiting 
was having its sorry day in Denmark. 
An innkeeper mistook the dark-skinned 
little man for a Jew, and set before him a 

M 



162 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

spoiled ham, retorting contemptuously, when 
protest was made, that it was " good enough 
for a Sheeny." Without further parley 
Mr. Dalgas seized the hot ham by its shank 
and beat the fellow with it till he cried for 
mercy. The son tells of the first school he 
attended, when he was but five years old. 
It was kept by the widow of one of Napo- 
leon's generals, a militant lady who every 
morning marshalled the school, a Lilliputian 
army with the teachers flanking the line 
like beardless sergeants in stays and petti- 
coats, and distributed rewards and punish- 
ments as the great Emperor was wont to 
do after a battle. For the dunces there 
was a corner strewn with dried peas on 
which they were made to kneel with long- 
eared donkey caps adorning their luckless 
heads. Very likely it was after an insult 
of this kind that Enrico decided to elope 
to America with his baby sister. They 
were found down by the harbor bargaining 
with some fishermen to take them over to 
Capri en route for the land of freedom. The 
elder Dalgas died while the children were 
yet little, and the widow went back to Den- 
mark to bring up her boys there. 

They were poor, and the change from 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 163 

the genial skies of sunny Italy to the bleak 
North did not make it any easier for them. 
Enrico's teacher saw it, and gave him his 
overcoat to be made over. But the boys 
spotted it and squared accounts with their 
teacher by snowballing the wearer of the 
big green plaid until he was glad to leave it 
at home, and go without. He was in the 
military school when war broke out with 
Germany in 1848. Both of his brothers 
volunteered, and fell in battle. Enrico was 
ordered out as lieutenant, and put on the 
shoulder-straps joyfully, to the great scandal 
of his godfather in Milan, who sympathized 
with the German cause. When the young 
soldier refused to resign he not only cut 
him off in his will, but took away a pension 
of four hundred kroner he had given his 
mother in her widowhood. If he had 
thoughts of bringing them over by such 
means, he found out his mistake. Mother 
and son were made of sterner stuff. Dalgas 
fought twice for his country, the last time 
in 1864, as a captain of engineers. 

It was no ordinary class, the one of 1851 
that resumed its studies in the military high 
school. Two of the students did not answer 
roll-call ; their names were written among 



i6 4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

the nation's heroic dead. Some had scars 
and wore the cross for valor in battle. 
All were first lieutenants, to be graduated 
as captains. Dalgas had himself transferred 
from the artillery to the engineers, and was 
detailed as road inspector. So the oppor- 
tunity of his life came to him. 

There were few railways in those days ; 
the highways were still the great arteries 
of traffic. Dalgas built roads that crossed 
the heath, and he learned to know it and 
the strong and independent, if narrow, 
people who clung to it with such a tena- 
cious grip. He had a natural liking for 
practical geology and for the chemistry of 
the soil, and the deep cuts which his roads 
sometimes made gave him the best of 
chances for following his bent. The heath 
lay as an open book before him, and he 
studied it with delight. He found the 
traces of the old forests, and noted their 
extent. Occasionally the pickaxe uncovered 
peat deposits of unsuspected depth and 
value. Sometimes the line led across the 
lean fields, and damages had to be discussed 
and assessed. He learned the point of 
view of the heath farmer, sympathized with 
his struggles, and gained his confidence. 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 165 

Best of all, he found a man of his own mind, 
a lawyer by the name of Morville, himself 
a descendant of the exiled Huguenots. It 
is not a little curious that when the way was 
cleared for the Heath Society's great work, 
in its formal organization with M. Mourier- 
Petersen, a large landowner, as their asso- 
ciate in its management, the three men who 
for a quarter of a century planned the work 
and marked out the groove in which it 
was to run were all of that strong stock which 
is by no means the most common in Denmark. 
With his lawyer friend Captain Dalgas 
tramped the heath far and wide for ten 
years. Then their talks had matured a 
plan. Dalgas wrote to the Copenhagen 
newspapers that the heath could be re- 
claimed, and suggested that it should be 
done by the State. They laughed at him. 
" Nothing better could have happened," 
he said in after years, " for it made us turn 
to the people themselves, and that was the 
road to success, though we did not know 
it." In the spring of 1866 a hundred men, 
little and big landowners most of them, 
met at his call, and organized the Heath 
Society * with the object of reclaiming the 
1 Danske Hedeselskab. 



166 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

moor. Dalgas became its managing di- 
rector. 

To restore to the treeless waste its forest 
growth was the fundamental idea, for until 
that was done nothing but the heather 
could grow there. The west wind would 
not let it. But the heath farmer shook 
his head. It would cost too much, and give 
too little back. What he needed was water 
and marl. Could the captain help them to 
these ? — that was another matter. The 
little streams that found their way into the 
heath and lost it there, dire need had taught 
them to turn to use in their fields ; not a 
drop escaped. But the river that ran be- 
tween deep banks was beyond their reach. 
Could he show them how to harness that ? 
Dalgas saw their point. " We are work- 
ing, not for the dead soil, but for the living 
men who find homes upon it," he told his 
associates, and tree planting was put aside 
for the time. They turned canal diggers 
instead. Irrigation became their aim and 
task ; the engineer was in his right place. 
The water was raised from the stream and 
led out upon the moor, and presently grass 
grew in the sand which the wiry stems of 
the heather had clutched so long. Green 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 167 

meadows lined the water-runs, and fragrant 
haystacks rose. To the lean sheep was 
added a cow, then two. The farmer laid 
by a little, and took in more land for culti- 
vation. That meant breaking the heath. 
Also, it meant marl. The heath is lime- 
poor ; marl is lime in the exact form in 
which it best fits that sandy soil. It was 
known to exist in some favored spots, but 
the poor heath farmer could not bring it 
from a distance. So the marl borer went 
with the canal digger. Into every acre he 
drove his auger, and mapped out his dis- 
coveries. At last accounts he had found 
marl in more than seventeen hundred places, 
and he is not done yet. Where there was 
none, Dalgas's Society built portable rail- 
ways into the moor far enough to bring it 
to nearly every farmer's door. 

It was as if a magic wand had been waved 
over the heath. With water and marl, 
the means were at hand for fighting it and 
winning out. Heads that had drooped in 
discouragement were raised. The cattle 
keep increased, and with it came the farmer's 
wealth. Marl changes the character of the 
heath soil ; with manure to fertilize it 
there was no reason why it should not grow 



168 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

crops — none, except the withering blast 
of the west wind. The time for Dalgas to 
preach tree planting had come. 

While the canal digger and marl seeker 
were at work, there had been neighborhood 
meetings and talks at which Captain Dalgas 
did the talking. When he spoke the heath 
boer listened, for he had learned to look 
upon him as one of them. He wore no gold 
lace. A plain man in eveiy-day gray tweeds, 
with his trousers tucked into his boots, he 
spoke to plain people of things that con- 
cerned them vitally, and in a way they could 
understand. So when he told them that 
the heath had once been forest-clad, at 
least a large part of it, and pointed them to 
the proofs, and that the woods could be 
made to grow again to give them timber 
and shelter and crops, they gave heed. It 
was worth trying at any rate. The shelter 
was the immediate thing. They began 
planting hedges about their homesteads ; not 
always wisely, for it is not every tree that will 
grow in the heath. The wind whipped and 
wore them, the ahl cramped their roots, 
and they died. The ahl is the rusty-red 
crust that forms under the heather in the 
course of the ages where the desert rules. 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 169 

Sometimes it is a loose sandstone formation ; 
sometimes it carries as much as twenty per 
cent of iron that is absorbed from the upper 
layers of the sand. In any case, it must be 
broken through ; no tree root can do it. 
The ahl, the poverty of the sand, and the 
wind, together make the "evil genius" of 
the heath that had won until then in the 
century-old fight with man. But this time 
he had backing, and was not minded to give 
up. The Heath Society was there to coun- 
sel, to aid. And soon the hedges took hold, 
and gardens grew in their shelter. There 
is hardly a farm in all west Jutland to-day 
that has not one, even if the moor waits 
just beyond the gate. 

Out in the desert the Society had made 
a beginning with plantations of Norway 
spruce. They took root, but the heather 
soon overwhelmed the young plants. Not 
without a fight would this enemy let go 
its grip upon the land. It had smothered 
the hardy Scotch pine in days past, and 
now the spruce was in peril. Searching 
high and low for something that would 
grow fast and grow green, Dalgas and his 
associates planted dwarf pine with the 
spruce. Strangely, it not only grew itself, 



ijo HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

but proved to be a real nurse for the other. 
The spruce took a fresh start, and they grew 
vigorously together — for a while. Then 
the pine outstripped its nursling, and threat- 
ened to smother it. The spruce was the 
more valuable ; the other was at best little 
more than a shrub. The croaker raised 
his voice : the black heath had turned 
green, but it was still heath, of no value to 
any one, then or ever. 

He had not reckoned with Dalgas. The 
captain of engineers could use the axe as 
well as the spade. He cut the dwarf pine 
out wherever the spruce had got its grip, 
and gave it light and air. And it grew 
big and beautiful. The Heath Society has 
now over nineteen hundred plantations that 
cover nearly a hundred thousand acres, 
and the State and private individuals, in- 
spired by the example it set, have planted 
almost as large an area. The ghost of the 
heath has been laid for all time. 

Go now across the heath and see the 
change forty years have wrought. You 
shall seek in vain the lonely shepherd with 
his stocking. The stocking has grown into 
an organized industry. In grandfather's 
day the farmer and his household " knitted 




Enrico M. Dalgas 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 171 

for the taxes " ; if all hands made enough in 
the twelvemonth to pay the tax-gatherer, 
they had done well. Last year the single 
county of Hammerum, of which more below, 
sold machine-made underwear to the value 
of over a million and a half kroner. The 
sheep are there, but no longer lean ; no more 
the ling-thatched hut, but prosperous farms 
backed by thrifty groves, with hollyhock 
and marigold in the dooryards, heaps of 
gray marl in the fields, tiny rivulets of water 
singing the doom of the heath in the sand ; 
for where it comes the heather moves out. 
A resolute, thrifty peasantry looks hope- 
fully forward. Not all of the heath is con- 
quered yet. Roughly speaking, thirty-three 
hundred square miles of heath confronted 
Dalgas in 1866. Just about a thousand 
remain for those who come after to wrestle 
with ; but already voices are raised plead- 
ing that some of it be preserved untouched 
for its natural beauty, while yet it is time. 
Meanwhile the plow goes over fresh acres 
every year — once, twice, then a deeper 
plowing, this time to break the stony crust, 
and the heath is ready for its human mis- 
sion. From the Society's nurseries that are 
scattered through the country come thou- 



172 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

sands of tiny trees, and are set out in the 
furrows, two of the spruce for each dwarf 
pine till the nurse has done her work. Then 
she is turned into charcoal, into tar, and a 
score of other things of use. The men who 
do the planting in summer find chopping 
to do in winter in the older plantations, at 
good wages. Money is flowing into the 
moor in the wake of the water and the marl. 
Roads are being made, and every day the 
mail-carrier comes. In the olden time a 
stranger straying into the heath often 
brought the first news of the world without 
for weeks together. Game is coming, too, 
— roebuck and deer, — in the young forests. 
The climate itself is changing ; more rain 
falls in midsummer, when it is needed. The 
sand-blast has been checked, the power of 
the west wind broken. The shrivelled soil 
once more takes up and holds the rains, 
and the streams will deepen, fish leap in 
them as of yore. Groves of beech and oak 
are springing up in the shelter of their 
hardier evergreen kin. " Make the land 
furry," Dalgas said, with prophetic eye 
beholding great forests taking the place of 
sand and heather, and in his lifetime the 
change was wrought that is transforming 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 173 

the barren moor into the home-land of a 
prosperous people. 

To the most unlikely of places, through 
the very prison doors, his gospel of hope 
has made its way. For the last dozen years 
the life prisoners in the Horsens penitentiary 
have been employed in breakingand reforest- 
ing the heath, and their keepers report 
that the effect upon them of the hard work 
in the open has been to notably cheer and 
brighten them. The discipline has been 
excellent. There have been few attempts 
at escape, and they have come to nothing 
through the vigilance of the other prisoners. 

While the population in the rest of Den- 
mark is about stationary, in west Jutland it 
grows apace. The case of Skaphus farm 
in the parish of Sunds shows how this 
happens. Prior to 1870 this farm of three 
thousand acres was rated the "biggest and 
poorest" in Denmark. Last year it had 
dwindled to three hundred and fifty acres, 
but upon its old land thirty-three home- 
steads had risen that kept between them 
sixty-two horses and two hundred and fifty- 
two cows, beside the sheep, and the manor 
farm was worth twice as much as before. 
The town of Herning, sometimes called 



174 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

"the Star of the Heath," is the seat of Ham- 
merum county, once the baldest and most 
miserable on the Danish mainland. In 
1 84 1 twenty-one persons lived in Herning. 
To-day there are more than six thousand in 
a town with handsome buildings, gas, 
electric lighting, and paved streets. The 
heath is half a dozen miles away. And 
this is not the result of any special or forced 
industry, but the natural, healthy growth 
of a centre for an army of industrious men 
and women winning back the land of their 
fathers by patient toil. All through the 
landscape one sees from the train the black 
giving way to the green. Churches rear 
their white gables ; bells that have been 
silent since the Black Death stalked through 
the land once more call the people to wor- 
ship on the old sites. More churches were 
built in the reign of "the good King Chris- 
tian," who has just been gathered to his 
fathers, than in all the centuries since the 
day of the Valdemars. 

Bog cultivation is the Heath Society's 
youngest child. The heath is full of peat- 
bogs that only need the sand, so plentiful 
on the uplands, to make their soil as good 
as the best, the muck of the bog being all 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 175 

plant food, and they have a surplus of water 
to give in exchange. With hope the key- 
note of it all, the State has taken up the 
herculean task of keeping down the moving 
sands of the North Sea coast. All along it 
is a range of dunes that in the fierce storms 
of that region may change shape and place 
in a single night. The "sand flight" at 
times reached miles inland, and threatened 
to bury the farmer's acres past recovery. 
Austrian fir and dwarf pine now grow upon 
the white range, helping alike to keep down 
the sand and to bar out the blast. 

With this exception, the great change has 
been, is being, wrought by the people them- 
selves. It was for their good, in the apathy 
that followed 1864, that it should be so, 
and Dalgas saw it. The State aids the man 
who plants ten acres or more, and assumes 
the obligation to preserve the forest intact ; 
the Heath Society sells him plants at half- 
price, and helps him with its advice. It 
disposes annually of over thirteen million 
young trees. The people do the rest, and 
back the Society with their support. The 
Danish peasant has learned the value of 
cooperation since he turned dairy farmer, 
and associations for irrigation, for tree 



176 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

planting, and garden planting are every- 
where. They even reach across the ocean. 
This year a call was issued to sons of the 
old soil, who have found a new home in Amer- 
ica, to join in planting a Danish-American 
forest in the desert where hill and heather 
hide a silvery lake in their deep shadows 
and returning wanderers may rest and 
dream of the long ago. 

Soldier though he was, Enrico Dalgas's 
pick and spade brigade won greater vic- 
tories for Denmark than her armies in two 
wars. He literally "won for his country 
within what she had lost without." A 
natural organizer, a hard worker who found 
his greatest joy in his daily tasks, a fearless 
and lucid writer who yet knew how to keep 
his cause out of the rancorous politics that 
often enough seemed to mistake partisan- 
ship for patriotism, he was the most modest 
of men. Praise he always passed up to 
others. At the "silver wedding" of the 
Society he founded they toasted him jubi- 
lantly, but he sat quiet a long time. When 
at last he arose, it was to make this charac- 
teristic little speech : 

"I thank you very much. His Excel- 
lency the Minister of the Interior, who is 





9sL.\ -nL' ■ ^:fc«»..,. 




MP" 



* *"';--• 












The Heath transformed in Twenty-one Years 



THE GHOST OF THE HEATH 177 

present here, will see from this how much 
you think of me, and possibly my recom- 
mendation that the State make a larger 
contribution to the Heath Society's treas- 
ury may thereby acquire greater weight 
with him. I drink to an increased appro- 
priation." 

On the heath Dalgas was prophet, prince, 
and friend of the people. In the crowds 
that flocked about his bier homespun el- 
bowed gold lace in the grief of a common 
loss. Boughs of the fragrant spruce decked 
his coffin, the gift of the heath to the mem- 
ory of him who set it free. 

To Dalgas apply the words of the seer 
with which he himself characterized the 
Society that was the child of his heart and 
brain : "The good men are those who plant 
and water," for they add to the happiness 
of mankind. 



N 



KING CHRISTIAN IV 




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Maestoso. 



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King Christian stood by loft - y mast In mist and 



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^fifirEfeS 



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tt=*=* 



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smoke; 



His sword was ham-mer-ing so fast, Thro' 



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Goth -ic helm and brain it passed; Then sank each hos-tile 



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Deep in the beech-woods between Copen- 
hagen and Elsinore, upon the shore of a 
limpid lake, stands Frederiksborg, one of the 
most beautiful castles in Europe. In its 
chapel the Danish kings were crowned for 
two centuries, and here was born on April 
12, 1577, King Christian of the Danish 
national hymn which Longfellow trans- 



KING CHRISTIAN 183 

lated into our tongue. No Danish ruler 
since the days of . the great Valdemars 
made such a mark upon his time ; none 
lives as he in the imagination of the people. 
He led armies to war and won and lost 
battles ; indeed, he lost more than he won on 
land when matched against the great gen- 
erals of that fighting era. On the sea he 
sailed his own ship and was the captain of 
his own fleet, and there he had no peer. He 
made laws in the days of peace and reigned 
over a happy, prosperous land. In his 
old age misfortune in which he had no share 
overwhelmed Denmark, but he was ever 
greatest in adversity, and his courage saved 
the country from ruin. The great did not 
love him overmuch ; but to the plain people 
he was ever, with all his failings, which were 
the failings of his day, a great, appealing 
figure, and lives in their hearts, not merely 
in the dry pages of musty books. 

He was eleven years old when his father 
died, and until he came of age the countiy 
was governed by a council of happily most 
able men who, with his mother, gave him 
such a schooling as few kings have had. He 
not only became proficient in the languages, 
living and dead, and in mathematics which 



1 84 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

he put to such practical use that he was 
among the greatest of architects and ship- 
builders ; he was the best all-round athlete 
among his fellows as well, and there was 
some sense in the tradition that survives to 
this day that whoever was touched by him 
in wrath did not live long, for he was very 
tall with a big, strong body, and when he 
struck, he struck hard. He was a daunt- 
less sailor who knew as much about sailing 
a ship as any one of his captains, and much 
more about building it. Danger appealed 
to him always. When the spire on the 
great cathedral in Copenhagen threatened 
to fall, he was the one who went up in it 
alone and gave orders where and how to 
brace it. 

As he grew, he sat in the council of 
state, learning kingcraft, and showed there 
the hard-headed sense of fairness and jus- 
tice that went with him through life. He 
was hardly fourteen when the case of three 
brothers of the powerful Friis family came 
before the council. They had attacked 
another young nobleman in the street, struck 
off one of his hands, and crippled the other. 
Because of their influence, the council was 
for being lenient, atrocious as the crime 



KING CHRISTIAN 185 

was. A fine was deemed sufficient. The 
young prince asked if there were not some 
law covering the case with severer punish- 
ment, and was told that in the province of 
Skaane there was such a law that applied 
to serfs. But the assault had not been 
committed in Skaane, and these were high 
noblemen. 

"All the worse for them," said the prince. 
"Is then a serf in Skaane to have more 
rights under the law than a nobleman in 
the rest of Denmark ? Let the law for the 
serf be theirs." And the judgment stood. 

He had barely attained his majority, when 
the young king was called upon to judge 
between another great noble and a widow 
whom he sued for 9000 daler, money he 
claimed to have lent to her husband. In 
proof he laid before the judges two bonds 
bearing the signatures of husband and wife. 
The widow denounced them as forgeries, 
but the court decided that she must pay. 
She went straight to the King with her story, 
assuring him that she had never heard of 
the debt. The King sent for the bonds 
and upon close scrutiny discovered that 
one of them was on paper bearing the 
water-mark of a mill that was not built till 



i86 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

two years after the date written in the 
bond. The noble was arrested and the 
search of his house brought to light several 
similar documents waiting their turn. He 
went to the scaffold. His rank only ag- 
gravated his offence in the eyes of the King. 
No wonder the fame of this judge spread 
quickly through the land. 

A dozen contented years he reigned in 
peace, doing justice between man and man 
at home. Then the curse of his house 
gripped him. In two centuries, since the 
brief union between the three Scandina- 
vian kingdoms was broken by the secession 
of Sweden, only two of sixteen kings in 
either country had gone to their rest with- 
out ripping up the old feud. It was now 
Christian's turn. The pretext was of little 
account : there was always cause enough. 
Gustav Adolf, whose father was then on 
the throne of Sweden, said in after years 
that there was no one he had such hearty 
admiration for and whose friend he would 
like so well to be as Christian IV : "The 
mischief is that we are neighbors." King 
Christian crossed over into Sweden and 
laid siege to the strong fortress of Kalmar 
where he first saw actual war and showed 



KING CHRISTIAN 187 

himself a doughty campaigner of intrepid 
courage. It came near costing him his life 
when a cannoneer with whom he had often 
talked on his rounds deserted to the enemy 
and picked the King out as his especial tar- 
get. Twice he killed an officer attending 
upon him, but the King he never hit. It is 
almost a pleasure to record that when he 
tried it again, in another fight, Christian 
caught him and dealt with him as the traitor 
he was, though the rough justice of those 
days is not pleasant to dwell on. The be- 
sieged tried to create a diversion by sneak- 
ing into camp at night and burying wax 
images of the King and his generals in the 
earth, where they were afterwards found and 
spread consternation through the army ; for 
such things were believed to be wrought by 
witchcraft and to bring bad luck to those 
whom they represented. 

However, neither the real courage of the 
defenders, nor their dallying with the black 
art, helped them any. King Christian 
stormed the town at the head of his army 
and took it. The burgomaster hid in the 
church, disguised as a priest, and pretended 
to be shriving some women when the crash 
came, but it did not save him. When the 



1 88 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Swedish king came with a host twice the 
size of his own, there was a battle royal, 
but Christian drove him off and laid siege 
to the castle where dissension presently 
arose between the garrison and its com- 
mander who was for surrendering. In the 
midst of their noisy quarrel, King Christian 
was discovered standing upon the wall, 
calmly looking on. He had climbed up 
alone on a rope ladder which the sentinel 
let down at his bidding. At the sight they 
gave it up and opened the gates, and the 
King wrote home, proudly dating his letter 
from "our castle Kalmar." 

Its loss so angered the Swedish king who 
was old and sick, that he challenged Chris- 
tian to single combat, without armor. The 
letters that passed between them were 
hardly kingly. King Christian wrote that 
he had other things to do : "Better catch a 
doctor, old man, and have your head- 
piece looked after." Helpless anger killed 
Karl, and Gustav Adolf, of whom the world 
was presently to hear, took the command 
and the crown. After that Christian had 
a harder road to hoe. 

A foretaste of it came to him when he 
tried to surprise the fortress of Gullberg 



KING CHRISTIAN 189 

near the present Gotaborg. Its commander 
was wounded early in the fight, but his 
wife who took his place more than filled it. 
She and her women poured boiling lye upon 
the attacking Danes until they lay "like 
scalded pigs" under the walls. Their leader 
knew when he had enough and made off 
in haste, with the lady commandant call- 
ing after him, "You were a little unexpected 
for breakfast, but come back for dinner 
and we will receive you properly." She 
would not even let them take their dead 
away. "Since God gave us luck to kill 
them," she said, "we will manage to bury 
them too." They were very pious days 
after their own fashion, and God was much 
on the lips of his servants. Troubles rarely 
come singly. Soon after, King Christian 
met the enemy unexpectedly and was so 
badly beaten that for the second time he 
had to run for it, though he held out till 
nearly all his men had fallen. His horse 
got mired in a swamp with the pursuers 
close behind. The gay and wealthy Sir 
Christen Barnekow, who had been last on 
the field, passed him there, and at once got 
down and gave him his horse. It meant 
giving up his life, and when Sir Christen 



i 9 o HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

could no longer follow the fleeing King he 
sat down on a rock with the words, "I give 
the King my horse, the enemy my life, and 
God my soul." The rock is there yet and 
the country folk believe that the red spots 
in the granite are Christen Barnekow's 
blood which all the years have not availed 
to wash out. 

They tired of fighting at last and made it 
up. Sweden paid Denmark a million daler ; 
for the rest, things stayed as they had been 
before. King Christian had shown himself 
no mean fighter, but the senseless sacking 
and burning of town and country that was 
an ugly part of those days' warfare went 
against his grain, and he tried to persuade 
the Swedes to agree to leave that out in 
future. Gustav Adolf had not yet grown 
into the man he afterward became. "As 
to the burning," was his reply, "seeing that 
it is the usage of war, and we enemies, why 
we will each have to do the best we can," 
which meant the worst. Had the two kings, 
who had much in common, got together in 
the years of peace that followed, much 
misery might have been saved Denmark, 
and a black page of history might read very 
differently. For those were the days of 



KING CHRISTIAN 191 

the Thirty Years' War, in which together 
they might have dictated peace to harassed 
Europe. 

Now King Christian's ambition, his piety, 
for he was a sincerely religious man, as well 
as his jealousy of his younger rival and of 
the growing power of Sweden — so mixed 
are human motives — made him yield to 
the entreaties of the hard-pressed Protestant 
princes to take up alone their cause against 
the German Emperor. He had tried for half 
a dozen years to make peace between them. 
At last he drew the sword and went down 
to force it. After a year of fighting Tilly 
and Wallenstein, the Emperor's great gen- 
erals, he met the former in a decisive bat- 
tle at Lutter-am-Baremberg. King Chris- 
tian's army was beaten and put to rout. 
He himself fled bareheaded through the 
forests of the Hartz Mountains, pursued 
by the enemy's horsemen. It was hardly 
necessary for the Emperor to make him 
promise as the price of peace to keep out 
of German affairs thenceforth. His allies 
had left him to fight it out alone. All 
their fine speeches went for nothing when it 
came to the test, and King Christian rode 
back to Denmark, a sadder and wiser man. 



i 9 2 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

It was left to Gustav Adolf, after all, to 
teach the German generals the lesson they 
needed. 

In the years of peace before that un- 
happy war, Danish trade and Danish cul- 
ture had blossomed exceedingly, thanks to 
the wisdom, the clever management, and 
untiring industry of the King. He built 
factories, cloth-mills, silk-mills, paper-mills, 
dammed the North Sea out from the 
rich marshlands with great dikes, taught 
the farmers profitable ways of tilling their 
fields ; for he was a wondrous manager for 
whom nothing was too little and nothing 
too big. He kept minute account of his 
children's socks and little shirts, and found 
ways of providing money for his war-ships 
and for countless building schemes he had 
in hand both in Denmark and Norway. 
For many of them he himself drew the 
plans. Wherever one goes to this day, his 
monogram, which heads this story, stares 
at him from the splendid buildings he 
erected. The Bourse in Copenhagen and 
the Round Tower, the beautiful palace of 
Rosenborg, a sort of miniature of his be- 
loved Frederiksborg which also he rebuilt 
on a more magnificent scale — these are 



KING CHRISTIAN 193 

among his works which every traveller in 
the North knows. He built more cities 
and strongholds than those who went before 
or came after him for centuries. Chris- 
tiania and Christiansand in Norway bear 
his name. He laid out a whole quarter of 
Copenhagen for his sailors, and the quaint 
little houses still serve that purpose. Re- 
gentsen, a dormitory for poor students at 
the university, was built by him. He 
created seven new chairs of learning and 
saw to it that all the professors got better 
pay. He ferreted out and dismissed in dis- 
grace all the grafting officials in Norway, 
and administered justice with an even hand. 
At the same time he burned witches with- 
out end, or let it be done for their souls' 
sake. That was the way of his time ; and 
when he needed fireworks for his son's 
wedding (he made them himself, too), he 
sent around to all the old cloisters and 
cathedral churches for the old parchments 
they had. Heaven only knows what treas- 
ures that can never be replaced went up in 
fire and smoke for that one night's fun. 

King Christian founded a score of big 
trading companies to exploit the East, 
taking care that their ships should have 



i 9 4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

their bulwarks pierced for at least six guns, 
so that they might serve as war-ships in 
time of need. He sent one expedition after 
another to the waters of Greenland in 
search of the Northwest Passage. It was 
on the fourth of these, in 1619, that Jens 
Munk with two ships and sixty-four sailors 
was caught in the ice of Hudson Bay and 
compelled to winter there. One after an- 
other the crew died of hunger and scurvy. 
When Jens Munk himself crept out from 
what he had thought his death-bed, he 
found only two of them all alive. Together 
they burrowed in the snow, digging for roots 
until spring came when they managed to 
make their way down to Bergen in the 
smallest of the two vessels. Jens Munk 
had deserved a better end than he got. He 
spun his yarns so persistently at court that 
he got to be a tiresome bore, and at last 
one day the King told him that he had no 
time to listen to him. Whereat the vet- 
eran took great umbrage and, slapping his 
sword, let the King know that he had 
served him well and was entitled to better 
treatment. Christian snatched the weapon 
in anger and struck him with the scabbard. 
The sailor never got over it. "He withered 



KING CHRISTIAN 195 

away and died," says the tradition. It was 
the old superstition ; but whether that 
killed him or not, the King lost a good man 
in Jens Munk. 

He was not averse to hearing the truth, 
though, when boldly put. When Ole Vind, 
a popular preacher, offended some of the 
nobles by his plain speech and they com- 
plained to the King, he bade him to the court 
and told him to preach the same sermon 
over. Master Vind was game and the 
truths he told went straight home, for he 
knew well where the shoe pinched. But 
King Christian promptly made him court 
preacher. "He is the kind we need here," 
he said. There was never a day that the 
King did not devoutly read his Bible, and 
he was determined that everybody should 
read it the same way. The result was a 
kind of Puritanism that filled the churches 
and compelled the employment of men to 
go around with long sticks to rap the people 
on the head when they fell asleep. Chris- 
tian the Fourth was not the first ruler who 
has tried to herd men into heaven by bat- 
talions. But his people would have gladly 
gone in the fire for him. He was their 
friend. When on his tramps, as likely as 



196 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

not he would come home sitting beside 
some peasant on his load of truck, and 
would step of! at the palace gate with a 
"So long, thanks for good company !' : He 
was everywhere, interested in everything. 
In his walking-stick he carried a foot-rule, 
a level, and other tools, and would stop at 
the bench of a workman in the navy-yard 
and test his work to see how well he was 
doing it. "I can lie down and sleep in any 
hut in the land," was his contented boast. 
And he would have been safe anywhere. 

Gustav Adolf was a wise and generous 
foe. While he lived he refused to listen 
to proposals for the partition of Denmark 
after King Christian's defeat in Germany. 
He knew well that she was a barrier against 
the ambition of the German princes and 
that, once she was out of the way, Sweden's 
turn would come next. But when he had 
fallen on the battle-field of Liitzen, and his 
generals, following in his footsteps, had 
achieved fame and lands and the freedom 
of worship for which he gave his life, the 
Swedish statesmen lost their heads and 
dreamed of the erection of a great northern 
Protestant state by the conquest of Den- 
mark and Norway, to balance the power 



KING CHRISTIAN 197 

of the German empire. Without warn- 
ing or declaration of war a great army was 
thrown into the Danish peninsula from the 
south. Another advanced from Sweden 
upon the eastern provinces, and a fleet hired 
in Holland for Swedish money came through 
the North Sea to help them over to the 
Danish islands. If the two armies met, 
Denmark was lost. In Swedish harbors 
a still bigger fleet was fitting out for the 
Baltic. 

King Christian was well up in the sixties, 
worn with the tireless activities of a long 
reign ; but once more he proved himself 
greater than adversity. When the evil 
tidings reached him, in the midst of pro- 
found peace, the enemy was already within 
the gates. The country lay prostrate. The 
name of Torstenson, the Swedish general, 
spread terror wherever it was heard. In 
the German campaigns he had been known 
as the "Swedish Lightning." Beset on 
every side, never had Denmark's need been 
greater. The one man who did not lose his 
head was her king. By his personal ex- 
ample he put heart into the people and 
shamed the cowardly nobles. He borrowed 
money wherever he could, sent his own sil- 



198 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

ver to the mint, crowded the work in the 
navy-yard by night and by day, gathered 
an army, and hurried with it to the Sounds 
where the enemy might cross. When the 
first ships were ready he sailed around the 
Skaw to meet the Dutch hirelings. "I am 
old and stiff," he said, "and no good any 
more to fight on land. But I can manage 
the ships." 

And he did. He met the Dutchmen 
in the North Sea, in under the Danish 
coast, and whipped them, almost single- 
handed, for his own ship Trefoldigheden was 
for a long while the only one that wind and 
tide would let come up with them. That 
done, he left one of his captains to watch 
lest they come out from among the islands 
where their ships of shallower draught had 
sought refuge, and sailed for Copenhagen. 
Everything that could carry sail was ready 
for him by that time ; also the news that 
the Swedish fleet of forty-six fighting s ips 
under Klas Fleming had sailed for the 
coast of Holstein to take on board Tor- 
stenson's army. 

King Christian lost no time. He hoisted 
his flag on Trefoldigheden and made after 
them with thirty-nine ships, vowing that 



KING CHRISTIAN 199 

he would win this fight or die. At Kol- 
berger Heide, the water outside the Fjord 
of Kiel, he caught up with them and at- 
tacked at once. The battle that then en- 
sued is the one of which the poet sings and 
with which the name of Christian IV is 
forever linked. 

At the outset the Danish fleet was in 
great peril. The Swedes fought gallantly 
as was their wont, and they were three or 
four against one, for most of the King's 
ships came up slowly, some of them pur- 
posely, so it seems. The King said after 
the battle of certain of his captains, "They 
used me as a screen between them and the 
enemy." His own ship and that of his 
chief admiral's bore the brunt of the battle 
for a long time. Trefoldigheden fired 315 
shots during the engagement, and at 
one time had four hostile, ships cluster- 
ing about her. King Christian was on 
the quarter-deck when a cannon-ball 
shivered the bulwark and one of his 
guns, throwing a shower of splintered iron 
and wood over him and those near him, 
killing and wounding twelve of the crew. 
The King himself fell, stunned and wounded 
in twenty-three places. His right eye was 



200 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

knocked out, two of his teeth, and his left 
ear hung in shreds. 

The cry was raised that the King was 
dead and panic spread on board. The 
story has it that a sailor was sent aloft to 
strike the flag but purposely entangled it 
in the rigging so that it could not fall ; he 
could not bear to see the King's ship strike 
its colors. In the midst of the tumult 
the aged monarch rose to his feet, torn and 
covered with blood. "I live yet," he cried, 
"and God has left me strength to fight on 
for my country. Let every man do his 
duty." Leaning on his sword, he led the 
fight until darkness fell and the battle was 
won. Denmark was saved. The danger 
of an invasion was averted. In the palace 
of Rosenborg the priceless treasure they 
show to visitors is the linen cloth, all blood- 
stained, that bound the King's face as he 
fought and won his last and biggest fight 
that day. 

Half blind, his body black and blue and 
sore from many bruises, King Christian yet 
refused to sail for Copenhagen to have his 
wounds attended. Three weeks he lay 
watching the narrow inlet behind which the 
beaten enemy was hiding, to destroy his 



KING CHRISTIAN 201 

ships when he came out. Then he gave 
over the command to another and hastened 
to the province of Skaane on the Swedish 
mainland, from which he expelled a hostile 
army. But when his back was turned, the 
men he had set to watch fell asleep and let 
the Swedish admiral steal out into the open. 
There he found and joined the Dutch ships 
that had slipped around the Skaw during 
the rumpus. Together they overwhelmed 
the Danish fleet, being now three to one, and 
crushed it. The slothful admiral paid for 
it with his life, but the harm was done. It 
was the last and heaviest blow. The old 
King sheathed his sword and set his name 
to a peace that took from Denmark some 
of her ancient provinces, with the bitter 
sigh : "God knows I had no share in this," 
and he had not. Even at the last he ap- 
pealed to the country to try the fortunes of 
war with him once more. The people were 
willing, but the nobles wanted peace, "how- 
ever God send it," and he had to yield. 
The treaty was made at Bromsebro, where 
a bridge crossed the river dividing the two 
kingdoms. In the middle of the river was 
an island and the negotiations were carried 
on in a tent erected there, the French and 



202 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

the Dutch being the arbitrators. The en- 
voys of Sweden and Denmark sat on oppo- 
site sides of the boundary post where the 
line cut through, each on the soil of his own 
country. So bitterly did they hate one 
another that they did not speak but wrote 
their messages, though they could have 
shaken hands where they sat. Even that 
was too close quarters, and they ended up 
by negotiating at second hand through the 
foreign ambassadors, all at the same table, 
but each looking straight past the other 
as if he were not there. 

Another touch of comedy relieves the 
gloom of that heavy day. It was the con- 
quest of the Sarnadal, a mountain valley in 
Norway just over the Swedish frontier, 
by Pastor Buschovius who, Bible in hand, 
at the head of two hundred ski-men invaded 
and captured it one winter's day without a 
blow. He came over the snow-fields into 
the valley that had not seen a preacher in 
many a long day, had the church bells rung 
to summon the people, preached to them, 
married and christened them, and gave 
them communion. The simple mountain- 
eers had hardly heard of the war and had 
nothing against their neighbors over the 



KING CHRISTIAN 203 

mountain. They joined Sweden then and 
there at the request of the preacher, and 
they stayed Swedes too, for in the final 
muster they were forgotten with their 
valley. Very likely the treaty-makers did 
not know that it existed. 

King Christian died four years later, in 
1648, past the three score and ten allotted 
to man. He was not a great leader like 
Gustav Adolf, and he was very human in 
some of his failings. But he was a strong 
man, a just king, and a father of his people 
who still cling to his memory with more 
than filial affection. 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 

The city of Prague, the capital of Bo- 
hemia, went wild with excitement one spring 
morning in the year 1618. The Protestant 
Estates of Germany had met there to protest 
against the aggressions of the Catholic 
League and the bad faith of the Emperor, 
who had guaranteed freedom of worship in 
the land and had now sent two envoys to defy 
the meeting and declare it illegal. In the 
old castle they delivered their message 
and bade the convention disperse ; and the 
delegates, when they had heard, seized them 
and their clerk and threw them out of the 
window " in good old Bohemian fashion." 
They fell seventy feet and escaped almost 
without a scratch, which fact was accepted 
by the Catholics of that strenuous day as 
proof of their miraculous preservation ; by 
the Protestants as evidence that the devil 
ever takes care of his own. 

It was the tiny spark that set Europe on 
fire. Out of it grew the Thirty Years' 
War, the most terrible that ever scourged the 
civilized world. When Catholic League and 

207 



208 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Evangelical Union first mustered their ar- 
mies, Bohemia had a prosperous population 
of four million souls ; when the war was over 
there were less than eight hundred thousand 
alive in that unhappy land, and the wolves 
that roamed its forests were scarcely more 
ferocious than the human starvelings who 
skulked among the smoking ruins of burned 
towns and hamlets. Other states fared 
little better. Two centuries did not wipe 
out the blight of those awful years when 
rapine and murder, inspired by bigotry and 
hate, ran riot in the name of religion. 

In the gloom and horror of it all a noble 
figure stands forth alone. It were almost 
worth the sufferings of a Thirty Years' War 
for the world to have gained a Gustav Adolf. 
The " snow-king" the Emperor's generals 
named him when he first appeared on 
German soil at the head of his army of North- 
men, and they prophesied that he would 
speedily melt, once the southern sun shone 
upon his host. They little knew the man. 
He went from victory to victory, less be- 
cause he was the greatest general of his day 
than because he, and all his army with him, 
believed himself charged by the Almighty 
with the defence of his country and of his 




Gustav Adolf 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 209 

faith. The Emperor had attacked both, the 
first by attempting to extend his dominion to 
the Baltic ; but Pommerania and the Baltic 
provinces were regarded by the Swedish 
ruler as the outworks of his kingdom ; and 
Sweden was Protestant. Hence he drew the 
sword. " Our brethren in the faith are 
sighing for deliverance from spiritual and 
bodily thraldom," he said to his people. 
" Please God, they shall not sigh long." 
That was his warrant. Axel Oxenstjerna, 
his friend and right hand who lived to 
finish his work, said of him, " He felt him- 
self impelled by a mighty spirit which he 
was unable to resist." As warrior, king, and 
man, he was head and shoulders above his 
time. Gustav Adolf saved religious liberty 
to the world. He paid the price with his 
life, but he would have asked no better fate. 
A soldier of God, he met a soldier's death on 
the field of battle, in the hour of victory. 

A man of destiny he was to his people as 
to himself. Long years before his birth, 
upon the appearance of the comet of 1577, 
Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, who was 
deep in the occultism of his day, had pre- 
dicted that a prince would appear in Finland 
who would do great things in Germany and 



210 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

deliver the Protestant peoples from the op- 
pression of the popes, and the prophecy was 
applied to Gustav Adolf by his subjects all 
through his life. He was born on December 
9, 1594, old style, as they still reckon time 
in Russia. Very early he showed the kind 
of stuff he was made of. When he was yet 
almost a baby he was told that there were 
snakes in the park, and showed fight at once : 
" Give me a stick and I will kill them." 
With the years he grew into a handsome 
youth who read his books, knew his Seneca 
by heart, was fond of the poets and the great 
orators, and mastered eight languages, living 
and dead. At seventeen he buckled on the 
sword and put the books away, but kept 
Xenophon as his friend ; for he was a mili- 
tary historian after his own heart. He 
was then Duke of Finland. 

The King, his father, was a stern but ob- 
servant man who, seeing his bent, threw him 
with soldiers to his heart's content, glad to 
have it so, for it was a warlike age. From his 
tenth year he let him sit in council with him 
and early delegated to him the duty of 
answering ambassadors from foreign coun- 
tries. The lad was the only one who dared 
oppose the king when he was in a temper, 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 211 

and often he made peace and healed wounds 
struck in anger. The people worshipped the 
fair young prince, and his father, when he 
felt the palsy of old age and bodily infirmities 
creeping upon him and thought of his unfin- 
ished tasks, would murmur as his eyes 
rested upon the bonny youth : " 1 lie faciei — 
He will do it." There is still in existence 
a document in which he laid down to him his 
course as a sovereign. " First of all," he 
writes, ' ' you shall fear God and honor your 
father and mother. Give your brothers and 
sisters brotherly affection ; love your father's 
faithful servants and requite them after 
their due. Be gracious to your subjects ; 
punish evil and love the good. Believe in 
men, but find out first what is in them. 
Hold by the law without respect of person." 
It was good advice to a prince, and the 
king took it to heart. On the docket of 
the Supreme Court at Stockholm is a letter 
written by Gustav Adolf to the judges and 
ordered by him to be entered there, which 
tells them plainly that if any of them is found 
perverting justice to suit him, the King, or 
any one else, he will have him flayed alive 
and his hide nailed to the judgment-seat, his 
ears to the pillory ! Not a nice way of 



212 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

talking to dignified judges, perhaps, but 
then the prescription was intended to suit the 
practice, if there was need. 

The young king earned his spurs in a war 
with Denmark that came near being his last 
as it was his first campaign. He and his 
horsemen were surprised by the Danes on a 
winter's night as they were warming them- 
selves by a fire built of the pews in the 
Wittsjo church, and they cut their way 
through only after a desperate fight on the 
frozen lake. The ice broke under the 
king's horse and he was going down when 
two of his men caught him in the nick of 
time. He got away with the loss of his 
sword, his pistols, and his gloves. "I will 
remember you with a crust that shall do for 
your bairns too," he promised one of his 
rescuers, a stout peasant lad, and he kept his 
word. Thomas Larsson's descendants a 
generation ago still tilled the farm the King 
gave him. When the trouble with Den- 
mark was over for the time being, he settled 
old scores with Russia and Poland in a way 
that left Sweden mistress of the Baltic. In 
the Polish war he was wounded twice and 
was repeatedly in peril of his life. Once he 
was shot in the neck, and, as the bullet could 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 213 

not be removed, it ever after troubled him to 
wear armor. His officers pleaded with him 
to spare himself, but his reply was that Caesar 
and Alexander did not skulk behind the lines ; 
a general must lead if he expected his men to 
follow. 

In this campaign he met the League's 
troops, sent to chase him back to his own so 
that Wallenstein, the leader of the imperial 
armies, might be " General of the Baltic Sea," 
unmolested. "Go to Poland, "he commanded 
one of his lieutenants, " and drive the 
snow-king out ; or else tell him that I shall 
come and do it myself." The proud soldier 
never knew how near he came to entertaining 
the snow-king as his unwilling guest then. 
In a fight between his rear-guard and the im- 
perial army Gustav Adolf was disarmed and 
taken prisoner by two troopers. There 
was another prisoner who had kept his pistol. 
He handed it to the King behind his back and 
with it he shot one of his captors and brained 
the other. For all that they nearly got him. 
He saved himself only by wriggling out 
of his belt and leaving it in the hands of 
the enemy. Eight years he campaigned in 
Poland and Prussia, learning the arts of 
war. Then he was ready for his life-work. 



2i 4 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

He made a truce with Poland that freed 
his hands for a season, and went home to 
Sweden. 

That spring (1629) he laid before the 
Swedish Estates his plan of freeing the Prot- 
estants. To defend Sweden, he declared, 
was to defend her faith, and the Estates 
voted supplies for the war. To gauge fully 
the splendid courage of the nation it must be 
remembered that the whole kingdom, in- 
cluding Finland, had a population of only a 
million and a half at the time and was pre- 
paring to attack the mighty Roman empire. 
In the first year of the war the Swedish 
budget was thirteen millions of dollars, of 
which nine and a half went for armaments. 
The whole army which Gustav Adolf led into 
Germany numbered only 14,000 soldiers, but 
it was made up of Swedish veterans led by 
men whose names were to become famous 
for all time, and welded together by an un- 
shakable belief in their commander, a rigid 
discipline and a religious enthusiasm that 
swayed master and men with a common im- 
pulse. Such a combination has in all days 
proven irresistible. 

The King's farewell to his people — he 
was never to see Sweden again — moved a 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 215 

nation to tears. He spoke to the nobles, 
the clergy and to the people, admonishing 
them to stand together in the hard years 
that were coming and gave them all into the 
keeping of God. They stood on the beach 
and watched his ships sail into the sunset 
until they were swallowed up in glory. Then 
they went back home to take up the burden 
that was their share. On the Riigen shore the 
King knelt with his men and thanked God 
for having brought them safe across the sea, 
then seized a spade, and himself turned the 
first sod in the making of a camp. "Who 
prays well, fights well," he said. 

He was not exactly hospitably received. 
The old Duke of Pommerania would have 
none of him, begged him to go away, and 
only when the King pointed to his guns and 
hinted that he had keys well able to open the 
gates of Stettin, his capital, did he give in and 
promise help. The other German princes, 
with one or two exceptions, were as cravenly 
short-sighted. They held meetings and de- 
nounced the Emperor and his lawless doings, 
but Gustav they would not help. The princes 
of Brandenburg and of Saxony, the two 
Protestant Electors of the empire, were 
rather disposed to hinder him, if they might, 



216 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

though Brandenburg was his brother-in-law. 
Only when the King threatened to burn the 
city of Berlin over his head did he listen. 
While he was yet laboring with them, 
recruiting his army and keeping it in practice 
by driving the enemy out of Pommerania, 
news reached him of the fall of Magdeburg, 
the strongest city in northern Germany, 
that had of its own free will joined his cause. 
The sacking of Magdeburg is one of the 
black deeds of history. In a night the 
populous city was reduced to a heap of 
smoking ruins under which twenty thousand 
men, women, and children lay buried. Not 
since the fall of Jerusalem, said Pappenheim, 
Tilly's famous cavalry leader to whom 
looting and burning were things of every day, 
had so awful a visitation befallen a town. 
Only the great cathedral and a few houses 
near it were left standing. The history of 
warfare of the Christian peoples of that day 
reads like a horrid nightmare. The fighting 
armies left a trail of black desolation where 
they passed. "They are not made up of 
birds that feed on air," sneered Tilly. 
Peaceful husbandmen were murdered, the 
young women dragged away to worse than 
slavery, and helpless children spitted upon 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 217 

the lances of the wild landsknechts and tossed 
with a laugh into the blazing ruins of their 
homes. But no such foul blot cleaves to the 
memory of Gustav Adolf. While he lived 
his men were soldiers, not demons. In his 
tent the work of Hugo Grotius on the rights 
of the nations in war and peace lay beside 
the Bible and he knew them both by heart. 
When he was gone, the fame of some of his 
greatest generals was smirched by as vile 
orgies as Tilly's worst days had witnessed. 
It is told of John Baner, one of the most 
brilliant of them, that he demanded ransom 
of the city of Prix, past which his way led. 
The city fathers permitted themselves an 
untimely jest : " Prix giebt nichts — Prix 
gives nothing," they said. Baner was as 
brief : " Prix wird zu nichts — Prix comes 
to nothing," and his army wiped it out. 

Grief and anger almost choked the 
King when he heard of Magdeburg's fate. 
" I will avenge that on the Old Corporal 
(Tilly's nickname)," he cried, "if it costs 
my life." Without further ado he forced 
the two Electors to terms and joined the 
Saxon army to his own. On September 
7, 1 63 1, fifteen months after he had landed 
in Germany, he met Tilly face to face at 



218 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Breitenfeld, a village just north of Leipzig. 
The Emperor's host in its brave show of 
silver and plumes and gold, the plunder of 
many campaigns under its invincible leader, 
looked with contempt upon the travel-worn 
Swedes in their poor, soiled garb. The 
stolid Finns sat their mean but wiry little 
horses very unlike Pappenheim's dreaded 
Walloons, descendants of the warlike Belgse 
of Gaul who defied the Germans of old in the 
forest of the Ardennes and joined Caesar in 
his victorious march. But Tilly himself 
was not deceived. He knew how far this 
enemy had come and with what hardships 
cheerfully borne ; how they had routed the 
Russians, written laws for the Poles in 
their own land, and overthrown armies and 
forts that barred their way. He would wait 
for reinforcements ; but his generals egged 
him on, said age had made him timid and 
slow, and carried the day. 

The King slept in an empty cart the night 
before the battle and dreamed that he 
wrestled with Tilly and threw him, but that 
he tore his breast with his teeth. When all 
was ready in the morning he rode along the 
front and told his fusiliers not to shoot till 
they saw the white in the enemy's eyes, the 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 219 

horsemen not to dull their swords by hacking 
the helmets of the Walloons : "Cut at their 
horses and they will go down with them." 
In the pause before the onset he prayed with 
head uncovered and lowered sword, and his 
voice carried to the farthest lines : 

"Thou, God, in whose hands are victory 
and defeat, look graciously upon thy ser- 
vants. From distant lands and peaceful 
homes have we come to battle for freedom, 
truth and thy gospel. Give us victory for 
thy holy name's sake, Amen !" 

Tilly had expected the King to attack, but 
the fiery Pappenheim upset his plans. The 
smoke of the guns drifted in the faces of the 
Swedes and the King swung his army to the 
south to get the wind right. In making the 
turn they had to cross a brook and this 
moment Pappenheim chose for his charge. 
Like a thunderbolt his Walloons fell upon 
them. The Swedish fire mowed them down 
like ripened grain and checked their im- 
petuous rush. They tried to turn the King's 
right and so outflank him ; but the army 
turned with them and stood like a rock. 
The extreme mobility of his forces was Gustav 
Adolf's great advantage in his campaigns. 
He revised the book of military tactics up 



220 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

to date. The imperial troops were massed 
in solid columns, after the old Spanish fash- 
ion, the impact of which was hard to resist 
when they struck. The King's, on the con- 
trary, moved in smaller bodies, quickly 
thrown upon the point of danger, and his 
artillery was so distributed among them as 
to make every shot tell on the compact body 
of the enemy. Whichever way Pappenheim 
turned he found a firm front, bristling with 
guns, opposing him. Seven times he threw 
himself upon the living wall ; each time his 
horsemen were flung back, their lines thinned 
and broken. The field was strewn with 
their dead. Tilly, anxiously watching, threw 
up his hands in despair. "This man will 
lose me honor and fame, and the Emperor 
his lands," he cried. The charge ended in 
wild flight, and Tilly saw that he must him- 
self attack, to turn the tide. 

On the double-quick his columns of spear- 
men charged down the heights, swept the 
Saxons from the field, and fell upon the 
Swedish left. The shock was tremendous. 
General Gustav Horn gave back to let his 
second line come up, and held the ground 
stubbornly against fearful odds. Word was 
brought the King of his danger. With the 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 221 

right wing that had crushed Pappenheim 
he hurried to the rescue. In the heat of 
the fight the armies had changed position, 
and the Swedes found themselves climbing 
the hill upon which Tilly's artillery was 
posted. Seeing this, the King made one 
of the rapid movements that more than 
once won him the day. Raising the cry, 
"Remember Magdeburg!" he carried the 
position with his Finns by a sudden over- 
whelming assault, and turned the guns 
upon the dense masses of the enemy fight- 
ing below. 

In vain they stormed the heights. Both 
wings and the centre closed in upon them, 
and the day was lost. Tilly fled, wounded, 
and narrowly escaped capture. A captain 
in the Swedish army, who was called Long 
Fritz because of his great height, was at 
his heels hammering him on the head with 
the butt of his pistol. A staff officer shot 
him down in passing, and freed his chief. 
Twilight fell upon a battle-field where seven 
thousand men lay dead, two-thirds of them 
the flower of the Emperor's army. Blood- 
stained and smoke-begrimed, Gustav Adolf 
and his men knelt on the field and thanked 
God for the victory. 



222 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Had the King's friend and adviser, Axel 
Oxenstjerna, been with him he might have 
marched upon Vienna then, leaving the 
Protestant Estates to settle their own 
affairs, and very likely have ended the war. 
Gustav Adolf thought of Tilly who would 
return with another army. Oxenstjerna 
saw farther, weighing things upon the scales 
of the diplomatist. 

"How think you we would fare," asked 
the King once, when the chancellor saw ob- 
stacles in their way which he would brush 
aside, " if my fire did not thaw the chill in 
you?" 

" But for my chill cooling your Majesty's 
fire," was his friend's retort, "you would 
have long since been burned up." The 
King laughed and owned that he was right. 

Instead of bearding the Emperor in his 
capital he turned toward the Rhine where 
millions of Protestants were praying for 
his coming and where his army might find 
rest and abundance. The cathedral city 
of Wiirzburg he took by storm. The bishop 
who ruled it fled at his approach, but the full 
treasury of the Jesuits fell into his hands. 
The Madonna of beaten gold and the twelve 
solid silver apostles, famous throughout 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 223 

Europe, were sent to the mint and coined 
into money to pay his army. In the cellar 
they found chests filled with ducats. The 
bottom fell out of one as they carried it up 
and the gold rolled out on the pavement. 
The soldiers swarmed to pick it up, but a 
good many coins stuck to their pockets. 
The King saw it and laughed : " Since you 
have them, boys, keep them." The dead 
were still lying in the castle yard after the 
siege, a number of monks among them. 
The color of some of them seemed high for 
corpses. " Arise from the dead," he said 
waggishly, " no one will hurt you," and the 
frightened monks got upon their feet and 
scampered away. 

Frankfort opened its gates to his victo- 
rious host and Niirnberg received him as 
a heaven-sent liberator. But Tilly was in 
the field with a fresh army, burning to 
avenge Breitenfeld. He had surprised Gen- 
eral Horn at Bamberg and beaten him. At 
the approach of the King he camped where 
the river Lech joins the Danube, awaiting 
attack. There was but one place to cross 
to get at him, and right there he stood. 
The king seized Donauworth and Ulm, and 
under cover of the fire of seventy guns 



224 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

threw a bridge across the Lech. Three 
hundred Finns carrying picks and spades 
ran across the shaky planks upon which the 
fire of Tilly's whole artillery park was con- 
centrated. Once across, they burrowed in 
the ground like moles and, with bullets rain- 
ing upon them, threw up earthworks for 
shelter. Squad after squad of volunteers 
followed. Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar 
swam his horsemen across the river farther 
up-stream and took the Bavarian troops 
in the flank, beating them back far enough 
to let him join the Finns at the landing. 
The King himself was directing the artillery 
on the other shore, aiming the guns with his 
own hand. The Walloons, Tilly's last hope, 
charged, but broke under the withering fire. 
In desperation the old field-marshal seized 
the standard and himself led the forlorn 
hope. Half-way to the bridge he fell, one 
leg shattered by a cannon-ball, and panic 
seized his men. The imperialists fled in 
the night, carrying their wounded leader. 
He died on the march soon after. Men said 
of him that he had served his master well. 

The snow-king had not melted in the 
south. He was master of the Roman em- 
pire from the Baltic to the Alps. The way 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 225 

to Austria and Italy lay open before him. 
Protestant princes crowded to do him 
homage, offering him the imperial crown. 
But Gustav Adolf did not lose his head. 
Toward the humbled Catholics he showed 
only forbearance and toleration. In Mu- 
nich he visited the college of the Jesuits, 
and spoke long with the rector in the Latin 
tongue, assuring him of their safety as long 
as they kept from politics and plotting. 
The armory in that city was known to be 
the best stocked in all Europe and the King's 
surprise was great when he found gun-car- 
riages in plenty, but not a single cannon. 
Looking about him, he saw evidence that 
the floor had been hastily relaid and remem- 
bered the "dead" monks at Wiirzburg. 
He had it taken up and a dark vault ap- 
peared. The King looked into it. 

" Arise!" he called out, "and come to 
judgment," and amid shouts of laughter 
willing hands brought out a hundred and 
forty good guns, welcome reinforcements. 

The ignorant Bavarian peasants had been 
told that the King was the very anti-Christ, 
come to harass the world for its sins, and 
carried on a cruel guerilla warfare upon his 
army. They waylaid the Swedes by night 



226 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

on their foraging trips and maimed and 
murdered those they caught with fiendish 
tortures. The bitterest anger filled Gustav 
Adolf's soul when upon his entry into Lands- 
hut the burgomaster knelt at his stirrup 
asking mercy for his city. 

" Pray not to me," he said harshly, " but 
to God for yourself and for your people, 
for in truth you have need." 

For once thoughts of vengeance seemed 
to fill his soul. "No, no!" he thundered 
when the frightened burgomaster pleaded 
that his townsmen should not be held ac- 
countable for the cruelty of the country- 
folk, " you are beasts, not men, and deserve 
to be wiped from the earth with fire and 
sword." From out the multitude there 
came a warning voice : "Will the King now 
abandon the path of mercy for the way of 
vengeance and visit his wrath upon these 
innocent people ? " No one saw the speaker. 
The day was oppressively hot and the King 
came near fainting in the saddle. As he 
rode out of the city toward the camp, a 
bolt of lightning struck the ground beside 
him and a mighty crash of thunder rolled 
overhead. Pale and thoughtful, he rode on. 
But Landshut was spared. That evening 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 227 

General Horn brought the anxious citizens 
the King's promise of pardon. 

A few weeks later tidings reached Gustav 
Adolf that Wallenstein and the Elector of 
Bavaria were marching to effect a junction 
at Nurnberg. If they took the city, his 
line of communication was cut and his army 
threatened. Wallenstein, who was a traitor, 
had been in disgrace ; but he was a great 
general and in his dire need Emperor Fer- 
dinand had no one else to turn to. So he 
took him back on his own terms, and in 
the spring he had an army of forty thou- 
sand veterans in the field. This was the host 
he was leading against Nurnberg. But the 
King got there first and intrenched him- 
self so strongly that there was no ousting 
him. Wallenstein followed suit and for 
eleven weeks the enemies eyed one another 
from their " lagers," neither willing to risk 
an attack. In the end Gustav Adolf tried, 
but even his Finns could not take the im- 
pregnable heights the enemy held. At last 
he went away with colors flying and bands 
playing, right under the enemy's walls, in 
the hope of tempting him out. But he 
never stirred. • 

When Wallenstein was sure he had gone, 



228 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

he burned his camp and turned toward 
Saxony to punish the Elector for joining 
the Swedes. A wail of anguish went up 
from that unhappy land and the King 
heard it clear across the country. By 
forced marches he hurried to the rescue of 
his ally, picking up Bernhard of Saxe- 
Weimar on the way. At Naumburg the 
people crowded about him and sought to 
kiss or even to touch his garments. The 
King looked sadly at them. "They put 
their trust in me, poor weak mortal, as if I 
were the Almighty. It may be that He 
will punish their folly soon upon the object 
of their senseless idolatry." He had come 
to stay, but when he learned that Wallen- 
stein had sent Pappenheim away to the 
west, thus weakening his army, and was 
going into winter quarters at Lutzen, near 
Leipzig, a half-day's march from the mem- 
orable Breitenfeld, he broke camp at once 
and hastened to attack him. Starting early, 
his army reached Lutzen at nightfall on 
November 15, 1632. 

Wallenstein believed the campaign was 
over for that year and the Swedes in winter 
quarters, and was taken completely by sur- 
prise. Had the King given battle that 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 229 

night, he would have wiped the enemy out. 
Two things, in themselves of little account, 
delayed him : a small brook that crossed 
his path, and the freshly plowed fields. His 
men were tired after the long march and he 
decided to let them rest. It was Wallen- 
stein's chance. Overnight he posted his 
army north of the highway that leads from 
Liitzen to Leipzig, dug deep the ditches 
that enclosed it, and made breastworks of 
the dirt. Sunrise found sheltered behind 
them twenty-seven thousand seasoned vet- 
erans to whom Gustav Adolf could oppose 
but twenty thousand ; but he had more 
guns and they were better served. 

As the day broke the Swedish army, 
drawn up in battle array, intoned Luther's 
hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God," 
and cheered the King. He wore a leathern 
doublet and a gray mantle. To the plead- 
ings of his officers that he put on armor he 
replied only, "God is my armor." "To- 
day," he cried as he rode along the lines, 
"will end all our hardships." He himself 
took command of the right wing, the gal- 
lant Duke Bernhard of the left. As at 
Breitenfeld, the rallying cry was, " God 
with us !" 



230 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

The King hoped to crush his enemy ut- 
terly, and the whole line attacked at once 
with great fury. From the start victory 
leaned toward the Swedish army. Then 
suddenly in the wild tumult of battle a heavy 
fog settled upon the field. What followed 
was all confusion. No one knows the rights 
of it to this day. The King led his famous 
yellow and blue regiments against the ene- 
my's left. "The black fellows there," he 
shouted, pointing to the Emperor's cuiras- 
siers in their black armor, "attack them !" 
Just then an adjutant reported that his in- 
fantry was hard pressed. " Follow me," he 
commanded, and, clapping spurs to his 
horse, set off at full speed for the threatened 
quarter. In the fog he lost his way and 
ran into the cuirassiers. His two attend- 
ants were shot down and a bullet crushed 
the King's right arm. He tried to hide the 
fact that he was wounded, but pain and loss 
of blood made him faint and he asked the 
Duke of Lauenburg who rode with him to 
help him out of the crush. At that mo- 
ment a fresh troop of horsemen bore down 
upon them and their leader, Moritz von 
Falkenberg, shot the King through the body 
with the exultant cry, "You I have long 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 231 

sought!" The words had hardly left his 
lips when he fell with a bullet through his 
head. 

The King swayed in the saddle and lost 
the reins. " Save yourself," he .whispered 
to the Duke, " I am done for." The Duke 
put his arm around him to support him, 
but the cuirassiers surged against them and 
tore them apart. The King's horse was 
shot in the neck and threw its rider. Awhile 
he hung by the stirrup and was dragged 
over the trampled field. Then the horse 
shook itself free and ran through the lines, 
spreading the tidings of the King's fall afar. 

A German page, Leubelfing, a lad of 
eighteen, was alone with the King. He 
sprang from his horse and tried to help him 
into the saddle but had not the strength to 
do it. Gustav Adolf was stout and very 
heavy. While he was trying to lift him 
some Croats rode up and demanded the 
name of the wounded man. The page held 
his tongue, and they ran him through. Gus- 
tav Adolf, to save him, said that he was the 
King. 1 At that they shot him through the 
head, and showered blows upon him. When 
the body was found in the night it was 

1 This is the story as the page told it. He lived two days. 



232 HERO TALES OF THE FARJsTORTH 

naked. They had robbed and stripped him. 

The King was dead. Through the Swed- 
ish ranks Duke Bernhard shouted the tid- 
ings. " Who now cares to live ? Forward, 
to avenge his death !" With the blind fury 
of the Berserkers of old the Swedes cleared 
the ditches, stormed the breastworks, and 
drove the foe in a panic before them. The 
Duke's arm was broken by a bullet. He 
hardly knew it. With his regiment he rode 
down the crew of one of the enemy's bat- 
teries and swept on. In the midst of it all a 
cry resounded over the plain that made the 
runaways halt and turn back. 

"Pappenheim! Pappenheim is here!" 

He had come with his Walloons in an- 
swer to the general's summons. " Where is 
the King?" he asked, and they pointed to 
the Finnish brigade. With a mighty crash 
the two hosts that had met so often before 
came together. Wallenstein mustered his 
scattered forces and the King's army was 
attacked from three sides at once. The 
yellow brigade fell where it stood almost 
to the last man. The blue fared little 
better. Slowly the Swedish infantry gave 
back. The battle seemed lost. 

But the tide turned once more. In the 




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GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 233 

hottest fight Pappenheim fell, pierced by 
three bullets. The "man of a hundred 
scars " died, exulting that the King whom he 
hated had gone before. With his death 
the Emperor's men lost heart. The Swedes 
charged again and again with unabated 
fury. Night closed in with Wallenstein's 
centre still unbroken ; but he had lost all 
his guns. Under cover of the darkness he 
made his escape. The King's army camped 
upon the battle-field. The carnage had been 
fearful ; nine thousand were slain. It was 
Wallenstein's last fight. With the remnants 
of his army he retreated to Bohemia, sick 
and sore, and spent his last days there plot- 
ting against his master. He died by an 
assassin's hand. 

The cathedrals of Vienna, Brussels, and 
Madrid rang with joyful Te Deums at the 
news of the King's death. The Spanish 
capital celebrated the "triumph" with twelve 
days of bull-fighting. Emperor Ferdinand 
was better than his day ; he wept at the 
sight of the King's blood-stained jacket. 
The Protestant world trembled ; its hope 
and strength were gone. But the Swedish 
people, wiping away their tears, resolved 
stoutly to carry on Gustav Adolf's work. 



234 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

The men he had trained led his armies to 
victory on yet many a stricken field. Peace 
came at length to Europe ; the last religious 
war had been fought and won. Freedom 
of worship, liberty of conscience, were 
bought at the cost of the kingliest head that 
ever wore a crown. The great ruler's life- 
work was done. 

Gustav Adolf was in his thirty-eighth year 
when he fell. Of stature he was tall and 
stout, a fair-haired, blue-eyed giant, stern 
in war, gentle in the friendships of peace. 
He was a born ruler of men. Though he 
was away fighting in foreign lands all the 
years of his reign, he kept a firm grasp on 
the home affairs of his kingdom. One 
traces his hand everywhere, ordering, shap- 
ing, finding ways, or making them where 
there was none. The valuable mines of 
Sweden were ill managed. The metal was 
exported in coarse pigs to Germany for 
very little, worked up there, and resold to 
Sweden at the highest price. He created a 
Board of Alines, established smelteries, and 
the day came when, instead of going abroad 
for its munitions of war, Sweden had for 
its customers half Europe. Like Christian 
of Denmark with whom he disagreed, he en- 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 235 

couraged industries and greatly furthered 
trade and commerce. He built highways 
and canals, and he did not forget the cause 
of instruction. Upon the university at 
Upsala he bestowed his entire personal 
patrimony of three hundred and thirteen 
farms as a free gift. His people honor him 
with cause as the real founder of the Swed- 
ish system of education. 

The master he was always. Sweden had, 
on one hand, a powerful, able nobility ; on 
the other, a strong, independent peasantry, — 
a combination full of pitfalls for a weak 
ruler, but with equal promise of great 
things under the master hand. His father 
had cowed the stubborn nobles with the 
headsman's axe. Gustav Adolf drew them 
to him and imbued them with his own 
spirit. He found them a contentious party 
within the state ; he left them its strongest 
props in the conduct of public affairs. Nor 
was it always with persuasion he worked. 
His reward for the unjust judge has been 
quoted. When the council failed to send 
him supplies in Germany, pleading failure 
of crops as their excuse, he wrote back : 
" You speak of the high prices of corn. 
Probably they are high because those who 



236 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

have it want to profit by the need of others." 
And he set a new chief over the finances. 
On the other hand, he gave shape to the 
relations between king and people. The 
Riksdag held its sessions, but the laws that 
ruled it were so vague that it was no unusual 
thing for men who were not members at all 
to attend and join in the debates. Gustav 
Adolf put an abrupt end to "a state of 
things that exposed Sweden to the contempt 
of the nations." As he ordered it, the ini- 
tiative remained with the crown ; it was 
the right of the Riksdag to complain and 
discuss ; of the King to " choose the best" 
after hearing all sides. 

As a young prince, Gustav Adolf fell 
deeply in love with Ebba Brahe, the beauti- 
ful daughter of one of Sweden's most power- 
ful noblemen. The two had been play- 
mates and became lovers. But the old 
queen frowned upon the match. He was 
the coming king, she was a subject, and the 
queen managed, with the help of Oxenstjerna, 
who was Gustav's best friend all through 
his life, to make him give up his love. 
"Then I will never marry," he cried in a 
burst of tempestuous grief. But when the 
queen had got Ebba Brahe safely married 



GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING 237 

to one of his father's famous generals, he 
wedded the lovely sister of the Elector of 
Brandenburg. She adored her royal hus- 
band, but never took kindly to Sweden, 
and the people did not like her. They 
clung to the great king's early love, and to 
this day they linger before the picture of 
the beautiful Ebba in the Stockholm castle 
when they come from his grave in the Rid- 
darholm church, while they pass the queen's 
by with hardly a glance. It is recorded 
that Ebba made her husband a good and 
dutiful wife. If her thoughts strayed at 
times to the old days and what might have 
been, it is not strange. In one of those 
moods she wrote on a window-pane in the 
castle : 

I am happy in my lot, 
And thanks I give to God. 

The queen-mother saw it and wrote under 
it her own version : 

You wouldn't, but you must. 
'Tis the lot of the dust. 



KING AND SAILOR, HEROES OF 
COPENHAGEN 



KING AND SAILOR, HEROES OF 
COPENHAGEN 

Of all the foolish wars that were ever 
waged, it would seem that the one declared 
by Denmark against Sweden in 1657 had 
the least excuse. A century before, the 
two countries had fought through eight 
bitter years over the momentous question 
whether Denmark should carry in her shield 
the three lions that stood for the three 
Scandinavian kingdoms, the Swedish one 
having set up for itself in the dissolution 
of the union between them, and at the end 
of the fight they were where they had 
started : each of them kept the whole 
brood. But this war was without even that 
excuse. Denmark was helplessly impov- 
erished. Her trade was ruined ; the nobles 
were sucking the marrow of the country. 
Of the freehold farms that had been its 
strength scarce five thousand were left in 
the land. It could hardly pay its way 
in days of peace. Its strongholds lay in 

R 241 



242 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

ruins ; it had neither arms, ammunition, 
nor officers. On its roster of thirty thou- 
sand men for the national defence were 
carried the dead and the yet unborn, while 
the Swedish army of tried veterans had gone 
from victory to victory under a warlike 
king. To cap the climax, Copenhagen had 
been harassed by pestilence that had killed 
one-fifth of its fifty thousand people. 

So ill matched were they when a stub- 
born king forced a war that could end only 
in disaster. When one of his councillors 
advised against the folly, he caned him and 
sent him into exile. Yet out of the fiery 
trial this king came a hero ; his queen, 
whose pride and wasteful vanity l had done 
its full share in bringing the country to the 
verge of ruin, became the idol of the nation. 
In the hour of its peril she grew to the 
stature of a great woman who shared danger 
and hardship with her people and by her 
example put hope and courage into their 
hearts. 

Karl Gustav, the Swedish king, was cam- 

1 It is of record that Queen Sofie Amalie used one- third 
of the annual revenues of the country for her household. 
The menu of a single "rustic dinner" of the court mentions 
200 courses and nearly as many kinds of preserves and des- 
sert, served on gold, with wines in corresponding abundance. 



KING AND SAILOR 243 

paigning in Poland, but as soon as he 
could turn around he marched his army 
against Denmark, scattered the forces that 
opposed him, and before news of his ad- 
vance had reached Copenhagen knocked at 
the gate of Denmark demanding " speech 
of brother Frederik in good Swedish." A 
winter of great severity had bridged the 
Baltic and the sounds of the island king- 
dom. In two weeks he led his army, horse, 
foot, and guns, over the frozen seas where 
hardly a wagon had dared cross before. 
Great rifts yawned in their way, and whole 
companies were swallowed up ; his own 
sleigh sank in the deep, but nothing stopped 
him. Danish emissaries came pleading for 
peace. He met them on the way to the 
capital, surrounded by his Finnish horse- 
men, and gave scant ear to their speeches 
while he drove on. Before the city he 
halted and dictated a peace so humiliating 
that one of the Danish commissioners ex- 
claimed when he came to sign, " I wish I 
could not write." Perhaps the same wish 
troubled the conqueror's ambitious dreams. 
The peace was broken as swiftly as made. 
In five months he was back before Frederik's 
capital with his whole army, while a Swed- 



244 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

ish fleet anchored in the roadstead outside. 
"What difference does it make to you," was 
the contemptuous taunt flung at the anxious 
envoys who sought his camp, "whether the 
name of your king is Karl or Frederik so 
long as you are safe?" He had come to 
make an end of Denmark. 

Copenhagen was almost without defences. 
The old earth walls mounted only six guns, 
with breastworks scarce knee-high. In 
places King Karl could have driven his 
sleigh into the heart of the city at the head 
of his army. But for the second time he 
hesitated when a swift blow would have 
won all — and lost. Overnight the Danish 
nation awoke to a fight for its life. King and 
people, till then strangers, in that hour 
became one. Frederik the Third met the 
craven counsel that he fly to Norway with 
the proud answer, " I will die in my nest, 
if need be, and my wife with me." With a 
shout the burghers swore to fight to the 
last man. The walls of the city rose as if 
by magic. Nobles and mechanics, clergy 
and laborers, students, professors and sail- 
ors worked side by side ; high-born women 
wheeled barrows. Every tree was cut down 
and made into palisades. The crops ripen- 



KING AND SAILOR 245 

ing in the fields were gathered in haste 
and the cattle driven in. The city had been 
provisioned for barely a week and gar- 
risoned by four hundred raw recruits. 
Sailors from the useless ships took out their 
guns and mounted them in the redoubts. 
Peasants flocked in and were armed with 
battle-axes, clubs, and boat-hooks when 
the supply of muskets gave out. When 
Karl Gustav drew his lines tight he faced 
six thousand determined men behind strong 
walls. The city stood in a ring of blazing 
fires. Its defenders were burning down the 
houses and woods beyond the moats to 
clear the way for their gunners. The King 
watched the sight from his horse in silence. 
He knew what it meant ; he had fought 
in the Thirty Years' War: "Now, I vow, 
we shall have fighting," was all he said. 

It was not long in coming. On the sec- 
ond night the garrison made a sortie and 
drove back the invaders, destroying their 
works with great slaughter. Night after 
night, and sometimes in the broad day, 
they returned to the charge, overwhelming 
the Swedes where least expected, captur- 
ing their guns, their supplies, and their 
outposts. Short of arms and ammunition, 



246 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

they took them in the enemy's lines. In 
one of these raids Karl Gustav himself was 
all but made prisoner. A horseman had 
him by the shoulder, but he wrenched him- 
self loose and spurred his horse into the sea 
where a boat from one of the ships rescued 
him. The defence took on something of 
the fervor of religious frenzy. Twice a day 
services were held on the walls of the city ; 
within, the men who could not bear arms, 
and the women, barricaded the streets 
with stones and iron chains for the last 
fight, were it to come. In his place on the 
wall every burgher had a hundred brickbats 
or stones piled up for ammunition, and by 
night when the enemy rained red-hot shot 
upon the city, he fought with a club or spear 
in one hand, a torch in the other. 

Eleven weeks the battle raged by night 
and by day. Then a Dutch fleet forced its 
way through the blockade after a fight in 
which it lost six ships and two admirals. 
It brought food, ammunition, and troops. 
The joy in the city was great. All day 
the church bells were rung, and the people 
hailed the Dutch as the saviours of the 
nation. But when they, too, would thank 
God for the victory and asked for the use 



KING AND SAILOR 247 

of the University's hall, they were refused. 
They were followers of Calvin and their 
heresies must not be preached in the place 
set apart for teaching the doctrines of the 
" pure faith," said the professors, who were 
Lutheran. It was the way of the day. 
The Reformation had learned little from 
the bigotry of the Inquisition. The Dutch- 
men had to be content with the court-house. 
But the siege was not over. Another 
hard winter closed in with the enemy at 
the door, burrowing hourly nearer the out- 
works, and food and fire-wood grew scarcer 
day by day in the hard-pressed city. When 
things were at the worst pass in February, 
the Swedes gathered their hosts for a final 
assault. In the midnight hour they came 
on with white shirts drawn over their uni- 
forms to make it hard to tell them from 
the snow. Karl Gustav himself led the 
storming party and at last was in the way 
of " getting speech of brother Frederik," 
for the Danish King was as good as his 
word. He had said that he would die in 
his nest, and time and again he had to be 
sternly reasoned with to prevent him from 
exposing himself overmuch. Where the dan- 
ger was greatest he was, and beside him 



248 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

ever the queen, all her frivolity gone and 
forgotten. She who had danced at the 
court fetes and followed the hounds on the 
chase as if the world had no other cares, 
became the very incarnation of the spirit 
of the bitter and bloody struggle. All 
through that winter the royal couple lived 
in a tent among their men, and when the 
alarm was sounded they were first on foot 
to lead them. Now that the hour had come, 
they were in the forefront of the fight. 

Where the famous pleasure garden Tivoli 
now is, the strength of the enemy was massed 
against the redoubts at the western gate. 
The name of " Storm Street" tells yet 
of the doings of that night. King Karl 
had promised to give over the captured 
town to be sacked by his army three days 
and nights, and like hungry wolves they 
swarmed to the attack, a mob of sailors 
and workmen with scaling ladders in the 
van. The moats they crossed in spite of 
the gaps that had been made in the ice to 
stop them, but the garrison had poured 
water over the walls that froze as it ran, 
until they were like slippery icebergs. A 
bird could have found no foothold on 
them. Showers of rocks and junk and 



KING AND SAILOR 249 

clubs fell upon the laddermen. Three 
times Karl Gustav hurled his columns 
against them ; as often they were driven 
back, broken and beaten. A few gained a 
foothold on the walls only to be dashed 
down to death. The burghers fought for 
their lives and their homes. Their women 
carried boiling pitch and poured it over 
the breastworks, and when they had no 
more, dragged great beams and rolled them 
down upon the ladders, sweeping them 
clear of the enemy. In the hottest fight 
Gunde Rosenkrantz, one of the king's coun- 
cillors, trod on a fallen soldier and, looking 
into his face, saw that it was his own son 
breathing his last. He bent over and 
kissed him, and went on fighting. 

In the early morning hour Karl Gustav 
gave the order to retreat. The attack had 
failed. Many of his general officers were 
slain ; nearly half of his army was killed, 
disabled, or captured. Six Swedish stand- 
ards were taken by the Danes. The moats 
were filled with the dead. The Swedes had 
" come in their shrouds." The guns of 
the city thundered out a triple salute of 
triumph and the people sang Te Deums on 
the walls. Their hardships were not over. 



2 so HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Fifteen months yet the city was invested 
and the home of daily privation ; but their 
greatest peril was past. Copenhagen was 
saved, and with it the nation ; the people 
had found itself and its king. That autumn 
a second Swedish army under the veteran 
Stenbock was massacred in the island of 
Fyen, and Karl Gustav exclaimed when the 
beaten general brought him the news, 
" Since the devil took the sheep he might 
have taken the buck too." He never got 
over it. Three months later he lay dead, 
and the siege of Copenhagen was raised in 
May, 1660. It had lasted twenty months. 

Seven score years and one passed, and 
the morning of Holy Thursday 1 saw a 
British fleet sailing slowly up the deep 
before Copenhagen, the deck of every ship 
bristling with guns, their crews at quarters, 
Lord Nelson's signal to " close for action" 
flying from the top of the flag-ship Elephant. 
Between the fleet and the shore lay a line 
of dismantled hulks on which men with 
steady eyes and stout hearts were guarding 
Denmark's honor. Once more it had been 
jeopardized by foolish counsel in high places. 

1 The battle of Copenhagen was fought April 2, 1801. 




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KING AND SAILOR 251 

Danish statesmen had trifled and tem- 
porized while England, facing all Europe 
alone in the fight for her life, made ready 
to strike a decisive blow against the Armed 
Neutrality that threatened her supremacy 
on the sea. Once more the city had been 
caught unprepared, defenceless, and once 
more its people rose as one man to meet 
the danger. But it was too late. Outside, 
in the Sound, a fleet as great as that led by 
Nelson waited, should he fail, to finish his 
work. That was to destroy the Danish 
ships, if need be to bombard the city and 
so detach Denmark from the coalition of 
England's foes. So she chose to consider 
such as were not her declared friends. 

Denmark had no fighting ships at home 
to pit against her. Her sailors were away 
serving in the merchant marine. She 
had no practised gunners, nothing but a 
huddle of dismantled vessels in her navy- 
yard, most of them half-rotten hulks with- 
out masts. Those that had standing rigging 
were even worse, for none of them had sails 
and the falling spars in battle lumbered up 
the decks and menaced the crew. But 
such as they were she made the most of 
them. Eighteen hulks were hauled into 



252 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

the channel and moored head and stern. 
Where they lay they could not be moved. 
Only the guns on one side were therefore 
of use, while the enemy could turn and 
manoeuvre. They were manned by farm 
lads, mechanics, students, enlisted in haste, 
not one of whom had ever smelt powder, 
and these were matched against Nelson's 
grim veterans. Even their commander, J. 
Olfert Fischer, had not been under fire before 
that day, for Denmark had had peace for 
eighty years. But his father had served 
as a midshipman with Tordenskjold and 
the son did not flinch, outnumbered though 
his force was, two to one, in men and guns. 
The sun shone fair upon the blue waters 
as the great fleet of thirty-odd fighting 
ships sailed up from the south. From the 
city's walls and towers a mighty multitude 
watched it come, unmindful of peril from 
shot and shell ; the Danish line was not 
half a mile away. In the churches whose 
bells were still ringing when the first gun 
was fired from the block-ship Provestenen, 
the old men and women prayed through the 
long day, for there were few homes in Copen- 
hagen that did not have son, brother, or 
friend fighting out there. A single gun 



KING AND SAILOR 253 

answered the challenge, now two and three 
at once, then broadside crashed upon broad- 
side with deafening roar. When at length all 
was quiet a tremendous report shook the city. 
It was the flag-ship Dannebrog that blew up. 
She was on fire with only three serviceable 
guns left when she struck her colors, but no 
ship of her name might sail with an enemy's 
prize crew on board, and she did not. 

The story of that bloody day has been told 
many times. Briton and Dane hoist their 
flags on April 2 with equal right, for never 
was challenge met with more dauntless valor. 
Lord Nelson owned that of all the hundred 
and five battles he had fought this was 
hottest. On the Monarch, which for hours 
was under the most galling fire from the 
Danish ships, two hundred and twenty of the 
crew were killed or wounded. "There was 
not a single man standing," wrote a young 
officer on board of her, "the whole way from 
the mainmast forward, a district containing 
eight guns a side, some of which were run 
out ready for firing, others lay dismounted, 
and others remained as they were after re- 
coiling. ... I hastened down the fore ladder 
to the lower deck and felt really relieved to 
find somebody alive." The slaughter on the 



254 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Danish ships was even greater. More than 
one-fifth of their entire strength of a little 
over five thousand men were slain or 
wounded. Of the eighteen hulls they lost 
thirteen, but only one were the British 
able to take home with them. The rest 
were literally shot to pieces and were burned 
where they lay. As one after another was si- 
lenced, those yet alive on board spiked their 
last guns, if indeed there were any left worth 
the trouble, threw their powder overboard 
and made for the shore. Twice the Danish 
Admiral abandoned his burning ship, the 
last time taking up his post in the island 
battery Tre Kroner. Each time one of the 
old hulls was crushed, a Briton pushed into 
the hole made in the line and raked the re- 
maining ones fore and aft until their decks 
were like huge shambles. The block-ship 
Indfodsretten bore the concentrated fire 
of five frigates and two smaller vessels 
throughout most of the battle. Her chief 
was killed. When the news reached head- 
quarters on shore, Captain von Schrodersee, 
an old naval officer who had been retired 
because of ill health, volunteered to take 
his place. He was rowed out, but as he came 
over the side of the ship a cannon-ball cut 



KING AND SAILOR 255 

him in two. Provestenen, as it was the first 
to fire a shot, held out also to the last. One- 
fourth of her crew lay dead, and her flag 
had been shot away three times when the 
decks threatened to cave in and Captain 
Lassen spiked his last guns and left the 
wreck to be burned. All through the fight 
she was the target of ninety guns to which 
she could oppose only twenty-nine of her 
own sixty. 

Nelson had promised Admiral Parker to 
finish the fight in an hour. When the 
battle had lasted three, Parker signalled to 
him to stop. Every school-boy knows the 
story of how Lord Nelson put the glass to 
his blind eye and, remarking that he could 
see no signal, kept right on. In the end he 
had to resort to stratagem to force a truce 
so that he might disentangle some of his 
ships that were drifting into great danger in 
the narrow channel. The ruse succeeded. 
Crown Prince Frederik, moved by com- 
passion for the wounded whom Nelson 
threatened to burn with the captured hulks 
if firing did not stop, ordered hostilities to 
cease without consulting the Admiral of the 
fleet, and the battle was over. Denmark's 
honor was saved. " Nothing," wrote our 



256 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

own Captain Mahan, " could place a na- 
tion's warlike fame higher than did her 
great deeds that day." All else was lost ; for 
" there had come upon Denmark one of those 
days of judgment to which nations are liable 
who neglect in time of peace to prepare for 
war." It had been long coming, but it had 
overtaken her at last and found all the bars 
down. 

Alongside the Dannebrog throughout her 
fight with Nelson's flag-ship, and edging ever 
closer in under the Elephant's side until at 
last the marines were sent to man her rail 
and keep it away with their muskets, lay 
a floating battery mounting twenty guns 
under command of a beardless second lieu- 
tenant. The name of Peter Willemoes will 
live as long as the Danish tongue is spoken. 
Barely graduated from the Naval Academy, 
he was but eighteen when the need of officers 
thrust the command of " Floating Battery 
No. I " upon him. So gallantly did he ac- 
quit himself that Nelson took notice of the 
young man who, every time a broadside 
crashed into his ship or overhead, swung 
his cocked hat and led his men in a lusty 
cheer. When after the battle he met the 
Crown Prince on shore, the English com- 



KING AND SAILOR 257 

mander asked to be introduced to his 
youthful adversary. "You ought to make 
an admiral of him," he said, and Prince 
Frederik smiled : " If I were to make ad- 
mirals of all my brave officers, I should have 
no captains or lieutenants left." When the 
Dannebrog drifted on the shoals, abandoned 
and burning, Willemoes cut his cables and 
got away under cover of the heavy smoke. 
Having neither sails nor oars, he was at the 
mercy of the tide, but luckily it carried 
him to the north of the Tre Kroner battery, 
and he reached port with forty-nine of his 
crew of one hundred and twenty-nine dead 
or wounded. The people received him as 
a conqueror returning with victory. His 
youth and splendid valor aroused the en- 
thusiasm of the whole country. Wherever 
he went crowds flocked to see him as the 
hero of " Holy Thursday's Battle." Espe- 
cially was he the young people's idol. 
Sailor that he was, he was ' ' the friend of all 
pretty girls," sang the poet of that day. 
He danced and made merry with them, 
but the one of them all on whom his heart 
was set, so runs the story, would have none 
of him, and sent him away to foreign parts, 
a saddened lover. 



258 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Meanwhile much praise had not made 
him vain. " I did my duty," he wrote to his 
father, a minor government official in the 
city of Odense where four years later Hans 
Christian Andersen was born on the anniver- 
sary day of the battle, " and I have whole 
limbs which I least expected. The Crown 
Prince and the Admiral have said that I 
behaved well." He was to have one more 
opportunity of fighting his country's enemy, 
and this time to the death. 

In the summer of 1807, England was 
advised that by the treaty of Tilsit Russia 
and Prussia had secretly joined Napoleon in 
his purpose of finally crushing his mortal 
enemy by uniting all the fleets of Europe 
against her, Denmark's too, by compulsion 
if persuasion failed. Without warning a 
British fleet swooped down upon the un- 
suspecting nation, busy with the pursuits of 
peace, bombarded and burned Copenhagen 
when the Commandant refused to deliver 
the ships into the hands of the robbers as 
a " pledge of peace," and carried away 
ships, supplies, even the carpenters' tools 
in the navy-yard. Nothing was spared. 
Seventy vessels, sixteen of them ships of the 
line, fell into their hands, and supplies that 



KING AND SAILOR 259 

filled ninety-two transports beside. A single 
fighting ship was left to Denmark of all her 
fleet, — the Prince Christian Frederik of sixty- 
eight guns. She happened to be away in a 
Norwegian port and so escaped. Willemoes 
was on leave serving in the Russian navy, 
but hastened home when news came of the 
burning of Copenhagen, and found a berth 
under Captain Jessen. 

On March 22, 1808, the Prince Christian, 
so she was popularly called, hunting a 
British frigate that was making Danish 
waters insecure, met in the Kattegat the 
Stately and the Nassau, each like herself of 
sixty-eight guns. The Nassau was the old 
Holsteen, renamed, — the single prize the 
victors had carried home from the battle of 
Copenhagen. Three British frigates were 
working up to join them. The coast of See- 
land was near, but wind and tide cut off 
escape to the Sound. Captain Jessen ran 
his ship in close under the shore so that at the 
last he might beach her, and awaited the 
enemy there. 

The sun had set, but the night was clear 
when the fight between the three ships 
began. With one on either side, hardly 
a pistol-shot away, Jessen returned shot for 



2 6o HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

shot, giving as good as they sent, and with 
such success that at the end of an hour and a 
half the Britons dropped astern to make 
repairs. The Prince Christian drifted, help- 
less, with rudder shot to pieces, half a wreck, 
rigging all gone, and a number of her guns 
demolished. But when the enemy returned 
he was hailed with a cheer and a broadside, 
and the fight was on once more. This time 
they were three to one ; one of the British 
frigates of forty-four guns had come up and 
joined in. 

When the hull of the Prince Christian 
was literally knocked to pieces, and of her 
576 men 69 lay dead and 137 wounded, in- 
cluding the chief and all of his officers who 
were yet alive, Captain Jessen determined 
as a last desperate chance to run one of his 
opponents down and board her with what 
remained of his crew. But his officers 
showed him that it was impossible ; the ship 
could not be manoeuvred. There was a 
momentary lull in the fire and out of the 
night came a cry, " Strike your colors ! ' : 
The Danish reply was a hurrah and a volley 
from all the standing guns. Three broad- 
sides crashed into the doomed ship in quick 
succession, and the battle was over. The 



KING AND SAILOR 261 

Prince Christian stood upon the shore, a 
wreck. 

Young Willemoes was spared the grief 
of seeing the last Danish man-of-war strike 
its flag. In the hottest of the fight, as he 
jumped upon a gun the better to locate the 
enemy in the gloom, a cannon-ball took off 
the top of his head. He fell into the arms 
of a fellow officer with the muttered words, 
"Oh God! my head — my country!' 
and was dead. In his report of the fight 
Captain Jessen wrote against his name : 
" Fell in battle — honored as he is missed." 
They made his grave on shore with the fallen 
sailors, and as the sea washed up other 
bodies they were buried with them. 

The British captured the wreck, but they 
could only set fire to it after removing the 
wounded. In the night it blew up where it 
stood. That was the end of the last ship of 
Denmark's proud navy. 



THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR 

ALONE 



THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR 

ALONE 

Jens Kofoed was the name of a trooper 
who served in the disastrous war of Den- 
mark against Sweden in Karl Gustav's 
day. He came from the island of Born- 
holm in the Baltic, where he tilled a farm 
in days of peace. When his troop went 
into winter quarters, he got a furlough to 
go home to receive the new baby that was 
expected about Christmas. Most of his 
comrades were going home for the holidays, 
and their captain made no objection. The 
Swedish king was fighting in far-off Poland, 
and no one dreamed that he would come 
over the ice with his army in the depth of 
winter to reckon with Denmark. So Jens 
Kofoed took ship with the promise that he 
would be back in two weeks. But they were 
to be two long weeks. They did not hear 
of him again for many moons, and then 
strange tidings came of his doings. Single- 
handed he had bearded the Swedish lion, and 

265 



266 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

downed it in a fair fight — strangest of all, 
almost without bloodshed. 

The winter storms blew hard, and it was 
Christmas eve when he made land, but 
he came in time to receive, not one new 
heir, but twin baby girls. Then there were 
six of them, counting Jens and his wife, 
and a merry Christmas they all had together. 
On Twelfth Night the little ones were 
christened, and then the trooper bethought 
himself of his promise to get back soon. 
The storms had ceased, but worse had 
befallen ; the sea was frozen over as far as 
eye reached, and the island was cut off from 
all communication with the outer world. 
There was nothing for it but to wait. It 
proved the longest and hardest winter any 
one then living could remember. Easter 
was at hand before the ice broke up, and let 
a fishing smack slip over to Ystad, on the 
mainland. It came back with news that 
set the whole island wondering. Peace 
had been made, and Denmark had ceded 
all its ancient provinces east of the Ore- 
sund to Karl Gustav. Ystad itself and 
Skaane, the province in which Jens Kofoed 
had been campaigning, were Swedish now, 
and so was Bornholm. All unknown to its 



THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR 267 

people, the island had changed hands in the 
game of war overnight, as it were. A 
Swedish garrison was coming over presently 
to take charge. 

When Jens Kofoed heard it, he sat down 
and thought things over. If there was 
peace, his old captain had no use for him, 
that was certain ; but there might be need 
of him at home. What would happen there, 
no one could tell. And there were the wife 
and children to take care of. The upshot 
of it all was that he -stayed. Only, to be 
on the safe side, he got the Burgomaster 
and the Aldermen in his home town, Hasle, 
to set it down in writing that he could not 
have got back to his troop for all he might 
have tried. Kofoed, it will be seen, was 
a man with a head on his shoulders, 
which was well, for presently he had need 
of it. 

There were no Danish soldiers in the is- 
land, only a peasant militia, ill-armed and 
untaught in the ways of war ; so no one 
thought of resisting the change of masters. 
The people simply waited to see what would 
happen. Along in May a company of one 
hundred and twenty men with four guns 
landed, and took possession of Castle Ham- 



268 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

mershus, on the north shore, the only strong- 
hold on the island, in the name of the Swed- 
ish king. Colonel Printzenskold, who had 
command, summoned the islanders to a 
meeting, and told them that he had come 
to be their governor. They were to obey 
him, and that was all. The people listened 
and said nothing. 

Perhaps if the new rulers had been wise, 
things might have kept on so. The people 
would have tilled their farms, and paid 
their taxes, and Jens Kofoed, with all his 
hot hatred of the enemy he had fought, 
might never have been heard of outside his 
own island. But the Swedish soldiers had 
been through the Thirty Years' War and 
plunder had become their profession. They 
rioted in the towns, doubled the taxes, 
put an embargo on trade and export, 
crushed the industries ; worse, they took 
the young men and sent them away to Karl 
Gustav's wars in foreign lands. They left 
only the old men and the boys, and these 
last they kept a watchful eye on for drafts 
in days to come. When the conscripts hid 
in the woods, so as not to be torn from their 
wives and sweethearts, they organized regu- 
lar man-hunts as if the quarry were wild 



THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR 269 

beasts, and, indeed, the poor fellows were 
not treated much better when caught. 

All summer they did as they pleased ; 
then came word that Karl Gustav had 
broken the peace he made, and of the siege 
of Copenhagen. The news made the people 
sit up and take notice. Their rightful 
sovereign had ceded the island to the Swed- 
ish king, that was one thing. But now 
that they were at war again, these strangers 
who persecuted them were the public enemy. 
It was time something were done. In 
Hasle there was a young parson with his 
heart in the right place, Poul Anker by name. 
Jens Kofoed sat in his church ; he had been 
to the wars, and was fit to take command. 
Also, the two were friends. Presently a 
web of conspiracy spread quietly through 
the island, gripping priest and peasant, 
skipper and trader, alike. Its purpose was 
to rout out the Swedes. The Hasle trooper 
and parson were the leaders ; but their 
secret was well kept. With the tidings 
that the Dutch fleet had forced its way 
through to Copenhagen with aid for the 
besieged, and had bottled the Swedish ships 
up in Landskrona, came a letter purporting 
to be from King Frederik himself, encourag- 



270 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

ing the people to rise. It was passed secretly 
from hand to hand by the underground 
route, and found the island ready for rebel- 
lion. 

Governor Printzenskold had seen some- 
thing brewing, but he was a fearless man, 
and despised the "peasant mob." How- 
ever, he sent to Sweden for a troop of horse- 
men, the better to patrol the island and 
watch the people. Early in December, 
1658, just a year after Jens Kofoed, the 
trooper, had set out for his home on fur- 
lough, the governor went to Ronne, the 
chief city in the island, to start off a ship 
for the reinforcements. The conspirators 
sought to waylay him at Hasle, where he 
stopped to give warning that all who had 
not paid the heavy war-tax would be sold 
out forthwith ; but they were too late. 
Master Poul and Jens Kofoed rode after 
him, expecting to meet a band of their 
fellows on the way, but missed them. The 
parson stayed behind then to lay the fuse 
to the mine, while Kofoed kept on to town. 
By the time he got there he had been joined 
by four others, Aage Svendson, Klavs 
Nielsen, Jens Laursson, and Niels Gum- 
melose. The last two were town officers. 




Jens Kofoed 



THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR 271 

As soon as the report went around Ronne 
that they had come, Burgomaster Klaus 
Kam went to them openly. 

The governor had ridden to the house 
of the other burgomaster, Per Larsson, 
who was not in the plot. His horse was 
tied outside and he just sitting down to 
supper when Jens Kofoed and his band 
crowded into the room, and took him pris- 
oner. They would have killed him there, 
but his host pleaded for his life. How- 
ever, when they took him out in the street, 
Printzenskold thought he saw a chance to 
escape in the crowd and the darkness, 
and sprang for his horse. But his great 
size made him an easy mark. He was 
shot through the head as he ran. The 
man who shot him had loaded his pistol 
with a silver button torn from his vest. 
That was sure death to any goblin on whom 
neither lead nor steel would bite, and it 
killed the governor all right. The place 
is marked to this day in the pavement of 
the main street as the spot where fell the 
only tyrant who ever ruled the island against 
the people's will. 

The die was cast now, and there was need 
of haste. Under cover of the night the 



272 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

little band rode through the island with 
the news, ringing the church bells far and 
near to call the people to arms. Many 
were up and waiting ; Master Poul had 
roused them already. At Hammershus the 
Swedish garrison heard the clamor, and 
wondered what it meant. They found out 
when at sunrise an army of half the popula- 
tion thundered on the castle gates summon- 
ing them to surrender. Burgomaster Kam 
sat among them on the governor's horse, 
wearing his uniform, and shouted to the 
officers in command that unless they sur- 
rendered, he, the governor, would be killed, 
and his head sent in to his wife in the castle. 
The frightened woman's tears decided the 
day. The garrison surrendered, only to 
discover that they had been tricked. Jens 
Kofoed took command in the castle. The 
Swedish soldiers were set to doing chores 
for the farmers they had so lately harassed. 
The ship that was to have fetched reinforce- 
ments from Sweden was sent to Denmark 
instead, with the heartening news. They 
needed that kind there just then. 

But the ex-trooper, now Commandant, 
knew that a day of reckoning was coming, 
and kept a sharp lookout. When the 



THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR 273 

hostile ship Spes was reported steering in 
from the sea, the flag of Sweden flew from 
the peak of Hammershus, and nothing on 
land betrayed that there had been a change. 
As soon as she anchored, a boat went out 
with an invitation from the governor to 
any officers who might be on board, to come 
ashore and arrange for the landing of the 
troops. The captain of the ship and the 
major in charge came, and were made 
prisoners as soon as they had them where 
they could not be seen from the ship. It 
blew up to a storm, and the Spes was obliged 
to put to sea, but as soon as she returned 
boats were sent out to land the soldiers. 
They sent only little skiffs that could hold 
not over three or four, and as fast as they 
were landed they were overpowered and 
bound. Half of the company had been thus 
disposed of when the lieutenant on board 
grew suspicious, and sent word that without 
the express orders of the major no more 
would come. But Jens Kofoed's wit was 
equal to the emergency. The next boat 
brought an invitation to the lieutenant to 
come in and have breakfast with the officers, 
who would give him his orders there. He 
walked into the trap ; but when he also 



274 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

failed to return, his men refused to follow. 
He had arranged to send them a sign, they 
said, that everything was all right. If it 
did not come, they would sail away to 
Sweden for help. 

It took some little persuasion to make 
the lieutenant tell about the sign, but in 
the end Jens Kofoed got it. It turned out 
to be his pocket-knife. When they saw that, 
the rest came, and were put under lock and 
key with their fellows. 

The ship was left. If that went back, 
all was lost. Happily both captain and 
mate were prisoners ashore. Four boat- 
loads of islanders, with arms carefully 
stowed under the seats, went out with the 
mate of the Spes, who was given to under- 
stand that if he as much as opened his 
mouth he would be a dead man. They 
boarded the .ship, taking the crew by sur- 
prise. By night the last enemy was com- 
fortably stowed, and the ship on her way 
to Ronne, where the prisoners were locked 
in the court-house cellar, with shotted guns 
guarding the door. Perhaps it was the 
cruelties practised by Swedish troops in 
Denmark that preyed upon the mind of 
Jens Kofoed when he sent the parson to 



THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR 275 

prepare them for death then and there ; 
but better counsel prevailed. They were 
allowed to live. The whole war cost only 
two lives, the governor's and that of a 
sentinel at the castle, who refused to sur- 
render. The mate of the Spes and two 
of her crew contrived to escape after they 
had been taken to Copenhagen, and from 
them Karl Gustav had the first tidings of 
how he lost the island. 

The captured ship sailed down to Co- 
penhagen with greeting to King Frederik 
that the people of Bornholm had chosen 
him and his heirs forever to rule over them, 
on condition that their island was never to 
be separated from the Danish Crown. The 
king in his delight presented them with a 
fine silver cup, and made Jens Kofoed cap- 
tain of the island, beside giving him a hand- 
some estate. He lived thirty-three years 
after that, the patriarch of his people, and 
raised a large family of children. Not a 
few of his descendants are to-day living in 
the United States. In the home of one of 
them in Brooklyn, New York, is treasured a 
silver drinking cup which King Frederik gave 
to the ex-trooper ; but it is not the one he 
sent back with his deputation. That one 
is still in the island of Bornholm. 



CARL LINNE, KING OF THE 
FLOWERS 



CARL LINNE, KING OF THE 
FLOWERS 

Years ago there grew on the Jonsboda 
farm in Smaland, Sweden, a linden tree 
that was known far and wide for its great 
age and size. So beautiful and majestic was 
the tree, and so wide the reach of its spread- 
ing branches, that all the countryside called 
it sacred. Misfortune was sure to come 
if any one did it injury. So thought the 
people. It was not strange, then, that the 
farmer's boys, when they grew to be learned 
men and chose a name, should call themselves 
after the linden. The peasant folk had no 
family names in those days. Sven Carlsson 
was Sven, the son of Carl ; and his son, if 
his given name were John, would be John 
Svensson. So it had always been. But 
when a man could make a name for himself 
out of the big dictionary, that was his right. 
The daughter of the Jonsboda farmer mar- 
ried ; and her son played in the shadow of 

279 



2 8o HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

the old tree, and grew so fond of it that when 
he went out to preach he also called himself 
after it. Nils Ingemarsson was the name 
he received in baptism, and to that he added 
Linnaeus, never dreaming that in doing it 
he handed down the name and the fame of 
the friend of his play hours to all coming 
days. But it was so ; for Parson Nils' 
eldest son, Carl Linne, or Linnaeus, became 
a great man who brought renown to his 
country and his people by telling them and 
all the world more than any one had ever 
known before about the trees and the 
flowers. The King knighted him for his 
services to science, and the people of every 
land united in acclaiming him the father of 
botany and the king of the flowers. 

They were the first things he learned to 
loVe in his baby world. If he was cross, they 
had but to lay him on the grass in the garden 
and put a daisy in his hand, and he would 
croon happily over it for hours. He was 
four years old when his father took him to 
a wedding in the neighborhood. The men 
guests took a tramp over the farm, and in the 
twilight they sat and rested in the meadow, 
where the spring flowers grew. The min- 
ister began telling them stories about them ; 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 281 

how they all had their own names and what 
powers for good or ill the apothecary found 
in the leaves and root of some of them. 
Carl's father, though barely out of college, 
was a bright and gifted man. One of his 
parishioners said once that they couldn't 
afford a whole parson, and so they took a 
young one ; but if that was the way of it, 
the men of Stenbrohult made a better bar- 
gain than they knew. They sat about 
listening to his talk, but no one listened 
more closely than little Carl. After that 
he had thought for nothing else. In the 
corner of the garden he had a small plot of 
his own, and into it he planted all the wild 
flowers from the fields, and he asked many 
more questions about them than his father 
could answer. One day he came back with 
one whose name he had forgotten. The 
minister was busy with his sermon. 

"If you don't remember," he said impa- 
tiently, "I will never tell you the name of 
another flower." The boy went away, his 
eyes wide with terror at the threat ; but 
after that he did not forget a single name. 

When he was big enough, they sent him 
to the Latin school at Wexio, where the 
other boys nicknamed him "the little 



282 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

botanist." His thoughts were outdoors 
when they should have been in the dry- 
books, and his teachers set him down as a 
dunce. They did not know that his real 
study days were when, in vacation, he 
tramped the thirty miles to his home. Every 
flower and every tree along the way was 
an old friend, and he was glad to see them 
again. Once in a while he found a book 
that told of plants, and then he was anything 
but a dunce. But when his father, after 
Carl had been eight years in the school, 
asked his teachers what they thought of 
him, they told him flatly that he might make 
a good tailor or shoemaker, but a minister — 
never ; he was too stupid. 

That was a blow, for the parson of Sten- 
brohult and his wife had set their hearts 
on making a minister of Carl, and small 
wonder. His mother was born in the par- 
sonage, and her father and grandfather had 
been shepherds of the parish all their lives. 
There were tears in the good minister's 
eyes as he told Carl to pack up and get ready 
to go back home ; he had an errand at Dr. 
Rothman's, but would return presently. 
The good doctor saw that his patient was 
heavy of heart and asked him what was 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 283 

wrong. When he heard what Carl's teachers 
had said, he flashed out : 

"What ! he not amount to anything ? 
There is not one in the whole lot who will 
go as far as he. A minister he won't be, 
that I'll allow, but I shall make a doctor of 
him such as none of them ever saw. You 
leave him here with me." And the parson 
did, comforted in spite of himself. But 
Carl's mother could not get over it. It 
was that garden, she declared, and when his 
younger brother as much as squinted that 
way, she flew at him with a " You dare to 
touch it ! " and shook him. 

When Dr. Rothman thought his pupil 
ready for the university, he sent him up to 
Lund, and the head-master of the Latin 
School gave him the letter he must bring, to 
be admitted. " Boys at school," he wrote in 
it, "maybe likened to young trees in orchard 
nurseries, where it sometimes happens that 
here and there among the saplings there are 
some that make little growth, or even appear 
as wild seedlings, giving no promise ; but 
when afterwards transplanted to the orchard, 
make a start, branch out freely, and at last 
yield satisfactory fruit." By good luck, 
though, Carl ran across an old teacher from 



284 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

Wexio, one of the few who had believed in 
him and was glad to see him. He took him 
to the Rector and introduced him with 
warm words of commendation, and also 
found him lodgings under the roof of Dr. 
Kilian Stobaeus. 

Dr. Stobseus was a physician of renown, 
but not good company. He was one-eyed, 
sickly, lame in one foot, and a gloomy hy- 
pochondriac to boot. Being unable to get 
around to his patients, he always had one 
or two students to do the running for him 
and to learn as best they might, in doing it. 
Carl found a young German installed there 
as the doctor's right hand. He also found 
a library full of books on botany, a veritable 
heaven for him. But the gate was shut 
against him ; the doctor had the key, and 
he saw nothing in the country lad but a 
needy student of no account. Perhaps the 
Rector had passed the head-master's letter 
along. However, love laughs at locksmiths, 
and Carl Linnaeus was hopelessly in love 
with his flowers. He got on the right side 
of the German by helping him over some 
hard stiles in the materia medica. In return, 
his fellow student brought him books out 
of the library when the doctor had gone to 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 285 

bed, and Carl sat up studying the big tomes 
till early cockcrow. Before the house 
stirred, the books were back on their shelves, 
the door locked, and no one was the wiser. 

No one except the doctor's old mother, 
whose room was across the yard. She did 
not sleep well, and all night she saw the 
window lighted in her neighbor's room. 
She told the doctor that Carl Linnaeus fell 
asleep with the candle burning every single 
night, and sometime he would upset it and 
they would all be burned in their beds. 
The doctor nodded grimly ; he knew the 
young scamps. No doubt they both sat up 
playing cards till dawn ; but he would teach 
them. And the very next morning, at two 
o'clock, up he stumped on his lame foot to 
Carl's room, in which there was light, sure 
enough, and went in without knocking. 

Carl was so deep in his work that he did 
not hear him at all, and the doctor stole up 
unperceived and looked over his shoulder. 
There lay his precious books, which he 
thought safely locked in the library, spread 
out before him, and his pupil was taking 
notes and copying drawings as if his life 
depended upon it. He gave a great start 
when Dr. Stobseus demanded what he was 



286 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

doing, but owned up frankly, while the doc- 
tor frowned and turned over his notes, leaf 
by leaf. 

" Go to bed and sleep like other people," 
he said gruffly, yet kindly, when he had 
heard it all, " and hereafter study in the day- 
time ; " and he not only gave him a key to 
his library, but took him to his own table 
after that. Up till then Carl had merely 
been a lodger in the house. 

When he was at last on the home stretch, 
as it seemed, an accident came near upset- 
ting it all. He was stung by an adder 
on one of his botanizing excursions, so far 
from home and help that the bite came near 
proving fatal. However, Dr. Stobaeus' skill 
pulled him through, and in after years he 
got square by labelling the serpent furia 
inf ernalis — hell- fury — in his natural his- 
tory. It was his way of fighting back. 
All through his life he never wasted an hour 
on controversy. He had no time, he said. 
But once when a rival made a particularly 
nasty attack upon him, he named a new 
plant after him, adding the descriptive ad- 
jective detestabilis — the detestable so-and-so. 
On the whole, he had the best of it ; for 
the names he gave stuck. 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 287 

It was during his vacation after the year 
at Lund that Linnaeus made a catalogue 
of the plants in his father's garden at Sten- 
brohult that shows us the country parson 
as no mean botanist himself ; for in the 
list, which is preserved in the Academy of 
Sciences at Stockholm, are no less than two 
hundred and twenty-four kinds of plants. 
Among them are six American plants that 
had found their way to Sweden. The 
poison ivy is there, though what they wanted 
of that is hard to tell, and the four-o'clock, 
the pokeweed, the milkweed, the pearly 
everlasting, and the potato, which was then 
(1732) classed as a rare plant. Not until 
twenty years later did they begin to grow 
it for food in Sweden. 

When Carl Linnaeus went up to Upsala 
University, his parents had so far got over 
their disappointment at his deserting the 
ministry that they gave him a little money 
to make a start with ; but they let him know 
that no more was coming — their pocket-book 
was empty. And within the twelvemonth, 
for all his scrimping and saving, he was on 
the point of starvation. He tells us himself 
that he depended on chance for a meal and 
wore his fellow students' cast-off clothes. 



288 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

His boots were without soles, and in his 
cheerless attic room he patched them with 
birch bark and card board as well as he 
could. He was now twenty-three years old, 
and it seemed as if he would have to give up 
the study that gave him no bread ; but still 
he clung to his beloved flowers. They often 
made him forget the pangs of hunger. And 
when the cloud was darkest the sun broke 
through. He was sitting in the Botanical 
Garden sketching a plant, when Dean 
Celsius, a great orientalist and theologian 
of his day, passed by. The evident poverty 
of the young man, together with his deep 
absorption in his work, arrested his atten- 
tion ; he sat down and talked with him. In 
five minutes Carl had found a friend and the 
Dean a helper. He had been commissioned 
to write a book on the plants of the Holy 
Land and had collected a botanical library 
for the purpose, but the work lagged. Here 
now was the one who could help set it going. 
That day Linnaeus left his attic room and 
went to live in the Dean's house. His days 
of starvation were over. 

In the Dean's employ his organizing 
genius developed the marvellous skill of the 
cataloguer that brought order out of the 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 289 

chaos of groping and guessing and blunder- 
ing in which the science of botany had 
floundered up till then. Here and there in 
it all were flashes of the truth, which Linnaeus 
laid hold of and pinned down with his own 
knowledge to system and order. Thus 
the Frenchman, Sebastian Vaillant, who had 
died a dozen years before, had suggested a 
classification of flowers by their seed-bearing 
organs, the stamens and pistils, instead of 
by their fruits, the number of their petals, 
or even by their color, as had been the vague 
practice of the past. Linnaeus seized upon 
this as the truer way and wrote a brief 
treatise developing the idea, which so pleased 
Dr. Celsius that he got his young friend a 
license to lecture publicly in the Botanical 
Garden. 

The students flocked to hear him. His 
message was one that put life and soul into 
the dry bones of a science that had only 
wearied them before. The professor of 
botany himself sat in the front row and 
hammered the floor with his cane in ap- 
proval. But his very success was the 
lecturer's undoing. Envy grew in place 
of the poverty he had conquered. The 
instructor, Nils Rosen, was abroad taking 
u 



2 9 o HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

his doctor's degree. He came home to find 
his lectures deserted for the irresponsible 
teachings of a mere undergraduate. He 
made grievous complaint, and Linnaeus was 
silenced, to his great good luck. For so his 
friend the professor, though he was unable 
to break the red tape of the university, 
got him an appointment to go to Lapland 
on a botanical mission. His enemies were 
only too glad to see him go. 

Linnaeus travelled more than three thou- 
sand miles that summer through a largely 
unknown country, enduring, he tells us, 
more hardships and dangers than in all his 
subsequent travels. Again and again he 
nearly lost his life in swollen mountain 
streams, for he would not wait until danger 
from the spring freshets was over. Once 
he was shot at as he was gathering plants on 
a hillside, but happily the Finn who did it 
was not a good marksman. Fish and rein- 
deer milk were his food, a pestilent plague 
of flies his worst trouble. But, he says in 
his account of the trip, which is as fascinating 
a report of a scientific expedition as was 
ever penned, they were good for something, 
after all, for the migrating birds fed on them. 
From his camps on lake or river bank he 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 291 

saw the water covered far and near with 
swarms of ducks and geese. The Lap- 
lander's larder was easily stocked. 

He came back from the dangers of the 
wild with a reputation that was clinched by 
his book " The Flora of Lapland," to find the 
dragon of professional jealousy rampant 
still at Upsala. His enemy, Rosen, per- 
suaded the senate of the university to 
adopt a rule that no un-degreed man should 
lecture there to the prejudice of the regu- 
larly appointed instructors. Tradition has 
it that Linnaeus flew into a passion at that 
and drew upon Rosen, and there might 
have been one regular less but for the inter- 
ference of bystanders. It may be true, 
though it is not like him. Men wore side- 
arms in those days just as some people carry 
pistols in their hip-pockets to-day, and with 
as little sense. At least they had the 
defence, such as it was, that it was the 
fashion. However, it made an end of Lin- 
naeus at Upsala for the time. He sought 
a professorship at Lund, but another got it. 
Then he led an expedition of his former 
students into the Dalecarlia mountains and 
so he got to Falun, where Baron Reuter- 
holm, one of Sweden's copper magnates, 



292 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

was seeking a guide for his two sons through 
the region where his mines were. 

Linnaeus was not merely a botanist, but 
an all around expert in natural science. He 
took charge of the boys and, when the trip 
was ended, started a school at Falun, where 
he taught mineralogy. It had been hit or 
miss with the miners up till then. There 
was neither science nor system in their 
work. What every-day experience or the 
test of fire had taught a prospector, in delv- 
ing among the rocks, was all there was of it. 
Linnaeus was getting things upon a scientific 
basis, when he met and fell in love with the 
handsome daughter of Dr. Moraeus. The 
young people would marry, but the doctor, 
though he liked the mineralogist, would not 
hear of it till he could support a wife. So 
he gave him three years in which to go 
abroad and get a degree that would give 
him the right to practise medicine anywhere 
in Sweden. The doctor's daughter gave 
him a hundred dollars she had saved, and 
her promise to wait for him. 

He went to Harderwyk in Holland and got 
his degree at the university there on the 
strength of a thesis on the cause of malarial 
fever, with the conclusions of which the 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 293 

learned doctors did not agree ; but they 
granted the diploma for the clever way in 
which he defended it. On the way down 
he tarried in Hamburg long enough to give 
the good burghers a severe jolt. They had 
a seven-headed serpent that was one of the 
wonders of the town. The keen sight of the 
young naturalist detected the fraud at once ; 
the heads were weasels' heads, covered with 
serpent's skin and cunningly sewed on 
the head of the reptile. The shape of the 
jaws betrayed the trick. But the Ham- 
burgers were not grateful. The serpent 
was an asset. There was a mortgage on it 
of ten thousand marks ; now it was not 
worth a hundred. They took it very ill, 
and Linnaeus found himself suddenly so 
unpopular that he was glad to get out of 
town overnight. What became of the 
serpent history does not record. 

Linnaeus had carried more than his thesis 
on malarial fever with him to Holland. At 
the bottom of his trunk were the manu- 
scripts of two books on botany which, he 
told his sweetheart on parting, would yet 
make him famous. Probably she shook 
her head at that. Pills and powders, and 
broken legs to set, were more to her way of 



294 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

thinking, and her father's, too. If only he 
had patients, fame might take care of itself. 
But now he put them both to shame. At 
Leyden he found friends who brought out 
his first book, " Systema Naturae," in which 
he divides all nature into the three kingdoms 
known to every child since. It was hardly 
more than a small pamphlet, but it laid 
the foundation for his later fame. To the 
enlarged tenth edition zoologists point back 
to this day as to the bed-rock on which they 
built their science. The first was quickly 
followed by another, and yet another. 
Seven large volumes bearing his name had 
come from the press before he set sail for 
home, a whole library in botany, and a 
new botany at that, so simple and sensible 
that the world adopted it at once. 

Dr. Hermann Boerhaave was at that 
time the most famous physician in Europe. 
He was also the greatest authority on sys- 
tematic botany. Great men flocked to his 
door, but the testy old Dutchman let them 
wait until it suited him to receive them. 
Peter the Great had to cool his heels in his 
waiting-room two long hours before his 
turn came. Linnaeus he would not see at 
all — until he sent him a copy of his book. 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 295 

Then he shut his door against all others and 
summoned the author. The two walked 
through his garden, and the old doctor 
pointed proudly to a tree which was very 
rare, he said, and not in any of the books. 
Yes, said Linnaeus, it was in Vaillant's. 
The doctor knew better ; he had annotated 
Vaillant's botany himself, and it was not 
there. Linnaeus insisted, and the doctor, in a 
temper, went for the book to show him. But 
there it was ; Linnaeus was right. Nothing 
would do then but he must stay in Holland. 
Linnaeus demurred ; he could not afford it. 
But Dr. Boerhaave knew a way out of that. 
He had for a patient Burgomaster ClifTort, 
a rich old hypochondriac with whom he 
could do nothing because he would insist on 
living high and taking too little exercise. 
When he came again he told him that what 
he needed was a physician in daily attend- 
ance upon him, and handed him over to 
Linnaeus. 

"He will fix your diet and fix your garden, 
too," was his prescription. The Burgo- 
master was a famous collector and had a 
wondrous garden that was the apple of his 
eye. He took Linnaeus into his house and 
gave him a ducat a day for writing his menu 



296 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

and cataloguing his collection. That was 
where his books grew, and the biggest and 
finest of them was "Hortus Cliffortianus," 
the account of his patron's garden. 

Armed with letters from Dr. Boerhaave 
and the Burgomaster, he took one strong- 
hold of professional prejudice after another. 
Not without a siege. One of them refused 
flatly to surrender. That was Sir Hans 
Sloan, the great English naturalist, to whom 
Dr. Boerhaave wrote in a letter that is pre- 
served in the British Museum : " Linnaeus, 
who bears this letter, is alone worthy of 
seeing you, alone worthy of being seen by 
you. He who shall see you both together 
shall see two men whose like will scarce 
ever be found in the world." And the doctor 
was no flatterer, as may be inferred from his 
treatment of Peter the Great. But the aged 
baronet had had his own way so long, and 
was so well pleased with it, that he would 
have nothing to do with Linnaeus. At 
Oxford the learned professor Dillenius re- 
ceived him with no better grace. "This," 
he said aside to a friend, "is the young man 
who confounds all botany," and he took 
him rather reluctantly into his garden. A 
plant that was new to him attracted Lin- 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 297 

nseus' attention and he asked to what family 
it belonged. 

"That is more than you can tell me," was 
the curt answer. 

"I can, if you will let me pluck a flower 
and examine it." 

"Do, and be welcome," said the professor, 
and his visitor after a brief glance at the 
flower told its species correctly. The pro- 
fessor stared. 

"Now," said Linnaeus, who had kept his 
eyes open, "what did you mean by the 
crosses you had put all through my book ?" 
He had seen it lying on the professor's table, 
all marked up. 

"They mark the errors you made," 
declared the other. 

" Suppose we see about that," said the 
younger man and, taking the book, led the 
way. They examined the flowers together, 
and when they returned to the study all 
the pride had gone out of the professor. 
He kept Linnaeus with him a month, never 
letting him out of his sight and, when he 
left, implored him with tears to stay and 
share his professorship ; the pay was enough 
for both. 

A letter that reached him from home on 



298 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

his return to Holland made him realize with 
a start that he had overstayed his leave. 
It was now in the fourth year since he had 
left Sweden. All the while he had written 
to his sweetheart in the care of a friend who 
proved false. He wanted her for himself 
and, when the three years had passed, told 
her that Carl would never come back. Dr. 
Moraeus was of the same mind, and had not 
a real friend of the absent lover turned up in 
the nick of time Linnaeus would probably 
have stayed a Dutchman to his death. 
Now, on the urgent message of his friend, he 
hastened home, found his Elisabeth holding 
out yet, married her and settled down in 
Stockholm to practise medicine. 

Famous as he had become, he found the 
first stretch of the row at home a hard one 
to hoe. His books brought him no income. 
Nobody would employ him, " even for a sick 
servant," he complained. Envious rivals 
assailed him and his botany, and there were 
days when herring and black bread was 
fare not to be despised in Dr. Linnaeus' 
household. But he kept pegging away 
and his luck changed. One well-to-do pa- 
tient brought another, and at last the 
queen herself was opportunely seized with 




Carl von Linne 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 299 

a bad cough. She saw one of her ladies 
take a pill and asked what it was. Dr. 
Linnaeus' prescription for a cold, she said, 
and it always cured her right up. So the 
doctor was called to the castle and his cure 
worked there, too. Not long after that he 
set down in his diary that "Now, no one can 
get well without my help." 

But he was not happy. " Once, I had 
flowers and no money," he said ; " now, 
I have money and no flowers." That they 
appointed him professor of medicine at 
Upsala did not mend matters. His lectures 
were popular and full of common sense. 
Diet and the simple life were his hobbies, 
temperance in all things. He ever insisted 
that where one man dies from drinking too 
much, ten die from overeating. Children 
should eat four times a day, grown-ups 
twice, was his rule. The foolish fashions 
and all luxury he abhorred. He himself 
in his most famous years lived so plainly 
that some said he was miserly, and his 
clothes were sometimes almost shabby. 
The happiest day of his life came when he 
and his old enemy Rosen, whom he found 
filling the chair of botany at the university, 
and with whom he made it up soon after 



3 oo HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

they became fellow members of the faculty, 
exchanged chairs with the ready consent of 
the authorities. So, at last, Linnaeus had 
attained the place he coveted above all 
others, and the goal of his ambition was 
reached. 

He lived at Upsala thirty-seven years 
and wrote many books. His students idol- 
ized him. They came from all over the 
world. Twice a week in summer, on Wednes- 
day and Saturday, they sallied forth with 
him to botanize in field and forest, and 
when they had collected specimens all the 
long day they escorted the professor home 
through the twilight streets with drums 
and trumpets and with flowers in their 
hats. But however late they left him at his 
door, the earliest dawn saw him up and at 
his work, for the older he grew the more 
precious the hours that remained. In sum- 
mer he was accustomed to rise at three 
o'clock ; in the dark winter days at six. 

He found biology a chaos and left it a 
science. In his special field of botany he 
was not, as some think, the first. He 
himself catalogued fully a thousand books 
on his topic. But he brought order into it ; 
he took what was good and, rejecting the 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 301 

false, fashioned it into a workable system. 
In the mere matter of nomenclature, his way 
of calling plants, like men, by a family name 
and a given name wrought a change hard to 
appreciate in our day. The common blue 
grass of our lawns, for instance, he called, 
and we call it still, Poa pratensis. Up to 
his time it had three names and one of them 
was Gramen pratense paniculatum majus 
latiore folio poa theophrasti. Dr. Rydberg, 
of the New York Botanical Gardens, said 
aptly at the bicentenary of his birth, that it 
was as if instead of calling a girl Grace 
Darling one were to say "Mr. Darling's 
beautiful, slender, graceful, blue-eyed girl 
with long, golden curls and rosy cheeks." 
The binomial system revolutionized the 
science. What the lines of longitude and 
latitude did for geography Linnaeus' genius 
did for botany. And he did not let pride of 
achievement persuade him that he had said 
the last word. He knew his system to be 
the best till some one should find a better, 
and said so. The King gave him a noble 
name and he was proud of it with reason — 
vain, some have said. But vanity did not 
make the creature deny the Creator. He 
ever tried to trace science to its author. 



3 02 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

When the people were frightened by the 
"water turning to blood" and overzealous 
priests cried that it was a sign of the wrath 
of God, he showed under the magnifying 
glass the presence of innumerable little 
animals that gave the water its reddish 
tinge, and thereby gave offence to some 
pious souls. But over the door of his lecture 
room were the words in Latin : " Live guilt- 
less — God sees you ! " and in his old age, 
seeing with prophetic eye the day of bacte- 
riology that dawned a hundred years after 
his death, he thanked God that He had 
permitted him to " look into His secret 
council room and workshop." 

He was one of the clear thinkers of all 
days, uniting imagination with sound sense. 
It was Linnaeus who discovered that plants 
sleep like animals. The Pope ordered that 
his books, wherever they were found in his 
dominions, should be burned as material- 
istic and heretical ; but Linnaeus lived to 
see a professor in botany at Rome dismissed 
because he did not understand his system, 
and another put in his place who did, and 
whose lectures followed his theories. When 
he was seventy he was stricken with apo- 
plexy, while lecturing to his students, and the 



CARL LINNE, KING OF FLOWERS 303 

last year of his life was full of misery. " Lin- 
naeus limps," is one of the last entries in his 
diary, " can hardly walk, speaks unintelli- 
gibly, and is scarce able to write." Death 
came on January 10, 1778. 

Under the white flashes of the northern 
lights in the desolate land he explored in 
his youth, there grows in the shelter of the 
spruce forests a flower which he found and 
loved beyond any other, the Linncea borealis, 
named after him. In some pictures we have 
of him, he is seen holding a sprig of it in his 
hand. It is the twin flower of the northern 
Pacific coast and of Labrador, indeed of the 
far northern woods from Labrador all the 
way to Alaska, that lifts its delicate, sweet- 
scented pink bells from the moss with gentle 
appeal, " long overlooked, lowly, flowering 
early" despite cold and storm, typical of the 
man himself. 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 

Hard by the town of Thorshavn, in the 
Faroe islands, a little lad sat one day carv- 
ing his name on a rock. His rough-coated 
pony cropped the tufts of stunted grass 
within call. The grim North Sea beat upon 
the shore below. What thoughts of the 
great world without it stirred in the boy 
he never told. He came of a people to 
whom it called all through the ages with a 
summons that rarely went unheeded. If 
he heard he gave no sign. Slowly and la- 
boriously he traced in the stone the letters 
N. R. F. When he had finished he sur- 
veyed his work with a quiet smile. 
"There!" he said, "that is done." 

The years went by, and a distant city 
paused in its busy life to hearken to bells 
tolling for one who lay dead. Kings and 
princes walked behind his coffin and a 
whole people mourned. Yet in life he had 
worn no purple. He was a plain, even a 
poor man. Upon his grave they set a 

307 



3 o8 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

rock brought from the island in the North 
Sea, just like the other that stands there 
yet, and in it they hewed the letters N. R. F., 
for the man and the boy were one. And he 
who spoke there said for all mankind that 
what he wrought was well done, for it was 
done bravely and in love. 

Niels Ryberg Finsen was born in i860 in 
the Faroe islands, where his father was an 
official under the Danish Government. His 
family came of the sturdy old Iceland stock 
that comes down to our time unshorn of its 
strength from the day of the vikings, and 
back to Iceland his people sent him to get 
his education in the Reykjavik Latin school, 
after a brief stay in Denmark where his 
teachers failed to find the key to the silent, 
reserved lad. There he lived the seven 
pregnant years of boyhood and youth, 
from fourteen to twenty-one, and ever 
after there was that about him that brought 
to mind the wild fastnesses of that storm- 
swept land. Its mountains were not more 
rugged than his belief in the right as he 
saw it. 

The Reykjavik school had a good name, 
but school and pupils were after their own 
kind. Conventional was hardly the word 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 309 

for it. Some of the "boys" were twenty 
and over. Finsen loved to tell of how they 
pursued the studies each liked best, paying 
scant attention to the rest. In their chosen 
fields they often knew much more than the 
curriculum called for, and were quite able 
to instruct the teacher ; the things they 
cared less about they helped one another 
out with, so as to pass examinations. For 
mere proficiency in lessons they cherished a 
sovereign contempt. To do anything by 
halves is not the Iceland way, and it was not 
Niels Finsen's. All through his life he was 
impatient with second-hand knowledge and 
borrowed thinking. So he worked and 
played through the long winters of the North. 
In the summer vacations he roamed the 
barren hills, helped herd the sheep, and 
drank in the rough freedom of the land and 
its people. At twenty-one the school gave 
him up to the university at Copenhagen. 

Training for life there was not the heyday 
of youthful frolicking we sometimes asso- 
ciate with college life in our day and land. 
Not until he was thirty could he hang up 
his sheepskin as a physician. Yet the stu- 
dents had their fun and their sports, and 
Finsen was seldom missing where these 



310 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

went on. He was not an athlete because 
already at twenty-three the crippling dis- 
ease with which he battled twenty years 
had got its grip on him, but all the more he 
was an outdoor man. He sailed his boat, 
and practised with the rifle until he became 
one of the best shots in Denmark. And it 
is recorded that he got himself into at least 
one scrape at the university by his love of 
freedom. 

The country was torn up at that time by 
a struggle between people and government 
over constitutional rights, and it had reached 
a point where a country parish had refused 
to pay taxes illegally assessed, as they 
claimed. It was their Boston tea-party. 
A delegation of the "tax refusers" had 
come to Copenhagen, where the political 
pot was boiling hot over the incident. The 
students were enthusiastic, but the authori- 
ties of the university sternly unsympathetic. 
The "Reds" were for giving a reception to 
the visitors in Regentsen, the great dormi- 
tory where, as an Iceland student, Finsen 
had free lodging ; but it was certain that the 
Dean would frown upon such a proposition. 
So they applied innocently for permission 
to entertain some "friends from the coun- 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 311 

try," and the party was held in Finsen's 
room. Great was the scandal when the 
opposition newspapers exploited the feast- 
ing of the tax refusers in the sacred pre- 
cincts of the university. To the end of his 
days Finsen chuckled over the way they 
stole a march on the Dean. 

For two or three years after getting his 
degree he taught in the medical school as 
demonstrator, eking out his scant income 
by tutoring students in anatomy. His sure 
hand and clear decision in any situation 
marked him as a practitioner of power, and 
he had thoughts once of devoting himself 
to the most delicate of all surgery, — that of 
the eye. He was even then groping for his 
life-work, without knowing it, for it was 
always light, light — the source or avenue 
or effect of it — that held him. And pres- 
ently his work found him. 

It has been said that Finsen was a sick 
man. A mysterious malady * with dropsical 
symptoms clutched him from the earliest 
days with ever tightening grip, and all his 

1 The autopsy which he himself ordered on his death-bed as 
his last contribution to medical knowledge, showed it to be a 
slow ossification of the membrane of the heart, involving the 
liver and all the vital organs. He was "tapped" for dropsy- 
more than twenty times. 



3 i2 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

manhood's life he was a great but silent 
sufferer. Perhaps it was that ; perhaps it 
was the bleak North in which his young years 
had been set that turned him to the light 
as the source of life and healing. He said 
it himself: "It was because I needed it. so 
much, I longed for it so." Probably it was 
both. Add to them his unique power of 
turning the things of everyday life to ac- 
count in his scientific research, and one 
begins to understand at once his success 
and his speedy popularity. He dealt with 
the humble things of life, and got to the 
heart of things on that road. And the 
people comprehended ; the wise men fell 
in behind him — sometimes a long way 
behind. 

In the yard of Regentsen there grows a 
famous old linden tree. Standing at his 
window one day and watching its young 
leaf sprout, Finsen saw a cat sunning itself 
on the pavement. The shadow of the 
house was just behind it and presently 
crept up on pussy who got up, stretched 
herself, and moved into the sunlight. In a 
little while the shadow overtook her there, 
and pussy moved once more. Finsen 
watched the shadow rout her out again and 




Dr. Niels Finsen 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 313 

again. It was clear that the cat liked the 
sunlight. 

A few days later he stood upon a bridge 
and saw a little squad of insects sporting 
on the water. They drifted down happily 
with the stream till they came within the 
shadow of the bridge, when they at once 
began to work their way up a piece to get a 
fresh start for a sunlight sail. Finsen knew 
just how they felt. His own room looked 
north and was sunless ; his work never pros- 
pered as it did when he sat with a friend 
whose room was on the south side, where 
the sun came in. It was warm and pleas- 
ant ; but was that all ? Was it only the 
warmth that made the birds break into 
song when the sun came out on a cloudy 
day, made the insects hum joyously and 
man himself walk with a more springy step ? 
The housekeeper who "sunned" the bed- 
clothes and looked with suspicion on a dark 
room had something else in mind ; the sun 
"disinfected" the bedding. Finsen wanted 
to know what it was in the sunlight that 
had this power, and how we could borrow 
it and turn it to use. 

The men of science had long before ana- 
lyzed the sunlight. They had broken it up 



3H HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

into the rays of different color that together 
make the white light we see. Any boy can 
do it with a prism, and in the band or spec- 
trum of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet 
that then appears, he has before him the 
cipher that holds the key to the secrets of 
the universe if we but knew how to read it 
aright ; for the sunlight is the physical 
source of all life and of all power. The dif- 
ferent colors represent rays with different 
wave-lengths ; that is, they vibrate with 
different speed and do different work. The 
red vibrate only half as fast as the violet, 
at the other end of the spectrum, and, roughly 
speaking, they are the heat carriers. The 
blue and violet are cold by comparison. 
They are the force carriers. They have 
power to cause chemical changes, hence are 
known as the chemical or actinic rays. It is 
these the photographer shuts out of his dark 
room, where he intrenches himself behind 
a ruby-colored window. The chemical ray 
cannot pass that ; if it did it would spoil his 
plate. 

This much was known, and it had been 
suggested more than once that the "disin- 
fecting" qualities of the sunlight might be 
due to the chemical rays killing germs. 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 315 

Finsen, experimenting with earthworms, ear- 
wigs, and butterflies, in a box covered with 
glass of the different colors of the spectrum, 
noted first that the bugs that naturally 
burrowed in darkness became uneasy in the 
blue light. As fast as they were able, they 
got out of it and crawled into the red, where 
they lay quiet and apparently content. 
When the glass covers were changed they 
wandered about until they found the red 
light again. The earwigs were the smart- 
est. They developed an intelligent grasp 
of the situation, and soon learned to make 
straight for the red room. The butterflies, 
on the other hand, liked the red light only 
to sleep in. It was made clear by many 
such experiments that the chemical rays, 
and they only, had power to stimulate, to 
"stir life." Finsen called it that himself. 
In the language of the children, he was get- 
ting "warm." 

That this power, like any other, had its 
perils, and that nature, if not man, was 
awake to them, he proved by some simple 
experiments with sunburn. He showed that 
the tan which boys so covet was the defence 
the skin puts forth against the blue ray. 
The inflammation of sunburn is succeeded 



316 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

by the brown pigmentation that hence- 
forth stands guard like the photographer's 
ruby window, protecting the deeper layers 
of the skin. The black skin of the negro 
was no longer a mystery. It is his protec- 
tion against the fierce sunlight of the 
tropics and the injurious effect of its chem- 
ical ray. 

Searching the libraries in Copenhagen for 
the records of earlier explorers in his field, 
and finding little enough there, Finsen 
came across the report of an American army 
surgeon on a smallpox epidemic in the 
South in the thirties of the last century. 
There were so many sick in the fort that, 
every available room being filled, they had 
to put some of the patients into the bomb- 
proof, to great inconvenience all round, as 
it was entirely dark there. The doctor 
noted incidentally that, as if to make up 
for it, the underground patients got well 
sooner and escaped pitting. To him it 
was a curious incident, nothing more. Upon 
Dr. Finsen, sitting there with the seventy- 
five-year-old report from over the sea in 
his hand, it burst with a flood of light : the 
patients got well without scarring because 
they were in the dark. Red light or dark- 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 317 

ness, it was all the same. The point was 
that the chemical rays that could cause 
sunburn on men climbing glaciers, and had 
power to irritate the sick skin, were barred 
out. Within a month he jolted the medical 
world by announcing that smallpox patients 
treated under red light would recover readily 
and without disfigurement. 

The learned scoffed. There were some of 
them who had read of the practice in the 
Middle Ages of smothering smallpox patients 
in red blankets, giving them red wine to 
drink and hanging the room with scarlet. 
Finsen had not heard of it, and was much 
interested. Evidently they had been grop- 
ing toward the truth. How they came 
upon the idea is not the only mystery of 
that strange day, for they knew nothing of 
actinic rays or sunlight analyzed. But 
Finsen calmly invited the test, which was 
speedy in coming. 

They had smallpox in Bergen, Norway, 
and there the matter was put to the proof 
with entire success ; later in Sweden and 
in Copenhagen. The patients who were 
kept under the red light recovered rapidly, 
though some of them were unvaccinated 
children, and bad cases. In no instance 



318 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

was the most dangerous stage of the disease, 
the festering stage, reached ; the tempera- 
ture did not rise again, and they all came 
out unscarred. 

Finsen pointed out that where other 
methods of treatment such as painting the 
face with iodine or lunar caustic, or covering 
it with a mask or with fat, had met with any 
success in the past, the same principle was 
involved of protecting the skin from the 
light, though the practitioner did not know 
it. He was doing the thing they did in the 
middle ages, and calling them quacks. 

It is strange but true that Dr. Finsen 
had never seen a smallpox patient at that 
time, but he knew the nature of the disease, 
and that the sufferer was affected by its 
eruption first and worst on the face and 
hands — that is to say, on the parts of the 
body exposed to the light — and he was as 
sure of his ground as was Leverrier when, 
fifty years before, he bade his fellow astrono- 
mers look in a particular spot of the heavens 
for an unknown planet that disturbed the 
movements of Uranus. And they found 
the one we call Neptune there. 

Presently all the world knew that the 
first definite step had been taken toward 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 319 

harnessing in the service of man the strange 
force in the sunlight that had been the 
object of so much speculation and conjecture. 
The next step followed naturally. In the 
published account of his early experiments 
Finsen foreshadows it in the words, "That 
the beginning has been made with the 
hurtful effects of this force is odd enough, 
since without doubt its beneficial effect is 
far greater." His clear head had already 
asked the question : if the blue rays of the 
sun can penetrate deep enough into the 
skin to cause injury, why should they not 
be made to do police duty there, and catch 
and kill offending germs — in short, to heal ? 
Finsen had demonstrated the correctness 
of the theory that the chemical rays have 
power to kill germs. But it happens that 
these are the rays that possess the least 
penetration. How to make them go deeper 
was the problem. By an experiment that 
is, in its simplicity, wholly characteristic 
of the man, he demonstrated that the red 
blood in the deeper layers of the skin was the 
obstacle. He placed a piece of photographic 
paper behind the lobe of his wife's ears and 
concentrated powerful blue rays on the 
other side. Five minutes of exposure made 



320 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

no impression on the paper ; it remained 
white. But when he squeezed all the 
blood out of the lobe, by pressing it between 
two pieces of glass, the paper was blackened 
in twenty seconds. 

That night Finsen knew that he had 
within his grasp that which would make 
him a rich man if he so chose. He had 
only to construct apparatus to condense the 
chemical rays and double their power many 
times, and to apply his discovery in medical 
practice. Wealth and fame would come 
quickly. He told the writer in his own 
simple way how he talked it over with 
his wife. They were poor. Finsen's salary 
as a teacher at the university was something 
like $1200 a year. He was a sick man, 
and wealth would buy leisure and luxury. 
Children were growing up about them who 
needed care. They talked it out together, 
and resolutely turned their backs upon it all. 
Hand in hand they faced the world with 
their sacrifice. What remained of life to 
him was to be devoted to suffering mankind. 
That duty done, what came they would 
meet together. Wealth never came, but 
fame in full measure, and the love and 
gratitude of their fellow-men. 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 321 

There is a loathsome disease called lupus, 
of which, happily, in America with our 
bright skies we know little. Lupus is the 
Latin word for wolf, and the ravenous 
ailment is fitly named, for it attacks by 
preference the face, and gnaws at the 
features, at nose, chin, or eye, with horrible, 
torturing persistence, killing slowly, while 
the patient shuts himself out from the 
world praying daily for death to end his 
misery. 

In the north of Europe it is sadly common, 
and there had never been any cure for 
it. Ointments, burning, surgery — they 
were all equally useless. Once the wolf had 
buried its fangs in its victim, he was doomed 
to inevitable death. The disease is, in fact, 
tuberculosis of the skin, and is the most 
dreadful of all the forms in which the 
white plague scourges mankind — was, un- 
til one day Finsen announced to the world his 
second discovery, that lupus was cured by 
the simple application of light. 

It was not a conjecture, a theory, like 
the red-light treatment for smallpox ; it 
was a fact. For two years he had been 
sending people away whole and happy 
who came to him in despair. The wolf 



322 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

was slain, and by this silent sufferer whose 
modest establishment was all contained 
within a couple of small shanties in a corner 
of the city hospital grounds, at Copenhagen. 

There was a pause of amazed incredulity. 
The scientific men did not believe it. Three 
years later, when the physician in charge 
of Finsen's clinic told at the medical congress 
in Paris of the results obtained at the 
Light Institute, his story was still received 
with a polite smile. The smile became 
astonishment when, at a sign from him, 
the door opened and twelve healed lupus 
patients came in, each carrying a photo- 
graph of himself as he was before he under- 
went the treatment. Still the doctors could 
not grasp it. The thing was too simple as 
matched against all their futile skill. 

But the people did not doubt. There 
was a rush from all over Europe to Copen- 
hagen. Its streets became filled with men 
and women whose faces were shrouded in 
heavy bandages, and it was easy to tell the 
new-comers from those who had seen "the 
professor." They came in gloom and misery ; 
they went away carrying in their faces the 
sunshine that gave them back their life. 
Finsen never tired, when showing friends 



NIELS F'INSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 323 

over his Institute, of pointing out the joyous 
happiness of his patients. It was his re- 
ward. For not "science for science's sake," 
or pride in his achievement, was his 
aim and thought, but just the wish to do 
good where he could. Then, in three more 
years, they awarded him the great Nobel 
prize for signal service to humanity, and 
criticism was silenced. All the world ap- 
plauded. 

"They gave it to me this year," said Fin- 
sen, with his sad little smile, "because they 
knew that next year it would have been 
too late." And he prophesied truly. He 
died nine months later. 

All that is here set down seems simple 
enough. But it was achieved with infinite 
toil and patience, by the most painstaking 
experiments, many times repeated to make 
sure. In his method of working Finsen 
was eminently conservative and thorough. 
Nothing "happened" with him. There was 
ever behind his doings a definite purpose 
for which he sought a way, and the higher the 
obstacles piled up the more resolutely he 
set his teeth and kept right on. "The 
thing is not in itself so difficult," he said, 
when making ready for his war upon the 



324 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

wolf, "but the road is long and the ex- 
periments many before we find the right 
way." 

He took no new step before he had 
planted his foot firmly in the one that went 
before ; but once he knew where he stood, 
he did not hesitate to question any scientific 
dogma that opposed him, always in his 
own quiet way, backed by irrefutable facts. 
In a remarkable degree he had the faculty 
of getting down through the husk to the 
core of things, but he rejected nothing 
untried. The little thing in hand, he ever 
insisted, if faithfully done might hold the 
key to the whole problem ; only let it be done 
now to get the matter settled. 

Whatever his mind touched it made 
perfectly clear, if it was not so already. 
As a teacher of anatomy he invented a dis- 
secting knife that was an improvement 
on those in use, and clamps for securing the 
edges of a wound in an operation. As a rifle 
shot he made an improved breech ; as a 
physician, observing the progress of his own 
disease, an effective blood powder for anaemia. 
At the Light Institute, which friends built 
for him, and the government endowed, he 
devised the powerful electric lamps to which 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 325 

he turned in the treatment of lupus, for the 
sun does not shine every day in Copen- 
hagen ; and when it did not, the lenses that 
gathered the blue rays and concentrated 
them upon the swollen faces were idle. And 
gradually he increased their power, checking 
the heat rays that would slip through and 
threatened to scorch the patient's skin, by 
cunning devices of cooling streams trickling 
through the tubes and the hollow lenses. 

Nothing was patented ; it was all given 
freely to the world. The decision which 
he and his wife made together was made 
once for all. When the great Nobel prize 
was given to him he turned it over to the 
Light Institute, and was with difficulty 
persuaded to keep half of it for himself 
only when friends raised an equal amount 
and presented it to the Institute. 

Finsen knew that his discoveries were 
but the first groping steps upon a new road 
that stretched farther ahead than any man 
now living can see. He was content to 
have broken the way. His faith was un- 
shaken in the ultimate treatment of the 
whole organism under electric light that, 
by concentrating the chemical rays, would 
impart to the body their life-giving power. 



326 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

He himself was beyond their help. Daily 
he felt life slipping from him, but no word 
of complaint passed his lips. He prescribed 
for himself a treatment that, if anything, 
was worse than the disease. Only a man of 
iron will could have carried it through. 

A set of scales stood on the table before 
him, and for years he weighed every mouth- 
ful of food he ate. He suffered tortures from 
thirst because he would allow no fluid to 
pass his lips, on account of his tendency to 
dropsy. Through it all he cheerfully kept up 
his labors, rejoicing that he was allowed to do 
so much. His courage was indomitable ; his 
optimism under it all unwavering. His favor- 
ite contention was that there is nothing in 
the world that is not good for something, 
except war. That he hated, and his satire 
on the militarism of Europe as its supreme 
folly was sharp and biting. 

Of such quality was this extraordinary 
man of whom half the world was talking 
while the fewest, even in his own home 
city, ever saw him. Fewer still knew him 
well. It suited his temper and native 
modesty, as it did the state of his bodily 
health, to keep himself secluded. His motto 
was: "bene vixit qui bene latuit — he 



NIELS FINSEN, THE WOLF-SLAYER 327 

has lived well who has kept himself well 
hidden" — and his contention was always 
that in proportion as one could keep him- 
self in the background his cause prospered, 
if it was a good cause. When kings and 
queens came visiting, he could not always 
keep in hiding, though he often tried. On 
one of his days of extreme prostration the 
dowager empress of Russia knocked vainly 
at his door. She pleaded so hard to be 
allowed to see Dr. Finsen that they relented 
at last, and she sat by his bed and wept in 
sympathy with his sufferings, while he with 
his brave smile on lips that would twitch 
with pain did his best to comfort her. 
She and Queen Alexandra, both daughters 
of King Christian, carried the gospel of 
hope and healing from his study to their 
own lands, and Light Institutes sprang up all 
over Europe. 

In his own life he treated nearly nineteen 
hundred sufferers, two-thirds of them lupus 
patients, and scarce a handful went from his 
door unhelped. When his work was done he 
fell asleep with a smile upon his lips, and the 
" universal judgment was one of universal 
thanksgiving that he had lived." He was 
forty-three years old. 



328 HERO TALES OF THE FAR NORTH 

When the news of his death reached the 
Rigsdag, the Danish parliament, it voted 
his widow a pension such as had been given 
to few Danes in any day. The king, his 
sons and daughters, and, as it seemed, the 
whole people followed his body to the grave. 
The rock from his native island marks the 
place where he lies. His work is his imperish- 
able monument. His epitaph he wrote 
himself in the speech another read when the 
Nobel prize was awarded him, for he was 
then too ill to speak. 

"May the Light Institute grasp the obli- 
gation that comes with its success, the obli- 
gation to maintain what I account the 
highest aim in science — truth, faithful 
work, and sound criticism." 



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The Making of an American 

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

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1910 



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